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Jack Smiles column

Friday, February 10, 2012

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Two Kevins; both will be missed

Sunday January 17, 2010 | 12:00 AM

Jack Smiles jsmiles@psdispatch.com

The wake for Kevin Powers at Howell-Lussi Funeral Home in West Pittston was scheduled for four to eight o’clock on Tuesday evening.

But folks lined up at 3:30 and didn’t stop coming until 9:30. They waited four and five abreast in 20-degree weather for an hour or more in a line that stretched across the parking lot and down Third Street.

Some folks came and left three different times before finally admitting that the line wasn’t going to end and that if they wanted to say good-bye to Kevin they had better get in it.

Halfway through the night as the temperature dropped, Bob Lussi and his wife Jane created a Disney-ride style line that snaked through every room in an attempt to get people out of the cold.

Bob Lussi said 400 memoriam cards were gone in 45 minutes. He estimated 2500-3000 people went through that evening.

In the morning before the funeral a couple of hundred more, who couldn’t get in the night before, came.

The huge turnout was a reflection of the many connections Kevin had made in his too short life. Don’t want to list them again here, but somehow for a guy who worked 50-60 hour weeks at his family’s 118-year-old plumbing supply business, he found time to get involved in a ton of causes.

But the turnout wasn’t just about all the man’s connections, it was about the man.

He was the treasurer for some different groups and the perfect treasurer he was for our time, when people with power over other people’s money often will sell their souls for a suit of clothes or rip off cancer charities, volunteer firemen, or youth sports leagues.

The man oozed integrity without a bit of phoniness.

Friends who just had to tell someone something, but had to know the secret would be kept, confided in Kevin Powers.

At the funeral mass at Immaculate Conception Church in West Pittston, Monsignor John Bendik said Kevin was “quietly generous.”

Bendik said at the Parish Community bazaar, Kevin palmed $100 and slipped it into the Monsignor’s hand saying, “buy some food for someone poor.”

Everyone roared with laughter when Bendik said, “He’ll never know how many kielbasa sandwiches and potato pancakes I had with that $100.”

Kevin was quietly generous, but he was also known for his frugality. There was a rotary phone in his house.

Because it worked there was no need to replace it.

He listened to LP records. He was loath to turn up the thermostat in the house or the air conditioning in the car.

He loved to root for the Yankees and Giants, but damn it, he hated to give them any of his money.

Kevin cultivated his cheap guy image, sort of Jack Benny style. He wasn’t insulted by it. He got a kick out of it.

Like the shoemaker whose kids had holes in their shoes, Kevin, the plumbing supply guy, had a bathroom in his downstairs bar with a urinal with an “out of order” sign on it.

Kevin had his eccentricities.

He didn’t go to doctors.

He didn’t like getting photographed.

He absolutely refused under any circumstances to drink light beer. “Why pay more for less,” he used to say.

Steadfast to traditions he refused to put up a Christmas Tree before Christmas Eve in the home where he grew up. Believing in what some might call quaint values, he didn’t want his wife Ann to work.

And she didn’t until her kids grew up.

Someone at the wake said there were two Kevins and there were.

Cheap Kevin - Generous Kevin.

Pat-you-on-the-back Kevin - Bust-you-a-good-one Kevin.

Serious Kevin - Goofy Kevin.

Workaholic Kevin - Fun-Loving Kevin.

After the wake Charlie Adonizio, Kevin’s best buddy and wine-making compadre, insisted on an Irish-style wake at Kevin’s house. There, brother Brian talked about the family business and Kevin’s vital role in it and the hope that he and brother Jim will keep it going.

Neighbor and childhood friend Jim Keaney did a stand up routine worthy of Seinfeld about Kevin as a kid.

Mike Dorbad, Kevin’s wife’s cousin and one of Kevin’s wine-making buddies, told a funny story about shooting a hole-in-one. Mike shot an ace and a newspaper mention of it misspelled his name as Mike “Dorbat.” To know Kevin is to know that Mike Dorbad was from then on Dorbat, never to live it down.

At the funeral mass, Charlie Adonizio delivered the eulogy.

He talked about Kevin’s stubbornness, his loyalty and told a story about his obituary photograph.

Kevin didn’t like to be photographed and in most photos of him his reluctance is on his face. But the head-and-shoulders obit photo showed him with a big beaming natural smile.

Why?

Because his feet where in a barrel of grapes he was crushing for wine.