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| Bro. Gerry Kollath |
A grim week here at Magpie headquarters upon learning of the death of Bro. Gerry Kollath, the first friend I made at Publicity Lodge when petitioning for membership in 2014. He had died May 2, but I didn’t find out until Tuesday, his birthday, when I belatedly made a “strict search” for him after failing to connect for a couple of weeks.
Not hearing back from him wasn’t odd—we weren’t married—but I thought it best to ask the local cops (Richmond, Virginia) to perform a wellness check. Which they wouldn’t do. They wanted me to call my local police, give them a code number Richmond provided which the locals would repeat back to Richmond to initiate the welfare check. Needless to say, my local cops didn’t know what I was talking about, and told me to just call Richmond. There are times when police officers really are just bureaucrats with guns.
I even tried to post an appeal to the Virginia Masons Facebook group to see if anyone there might be a Richmond policeman who might help, but none of the eight admins allowed it.
Anyway, it was at that moment when it finally occurred to me to simply google Gerry’s name. Not wanting to find a death notice, it nonetheless came up directly thanks to his Disabled American Vets chapter.
Gerry was a veteran of the U.S. Army. He had been a captain in the 82nd Airborne Division and other parachute infantry from 1980 to 1990, being honorably discharged upon a diabetes diagnosis just before the first Gulf War.
His military years unquestionably comprised the defining chapter of his life despite marriage & fatherhood and his career in education. He never stopped talking about the Army.
While Gerry and I were getting to know each other, his health crashed. Repeated strokes, a coma, a heart attack, and more robbed him of his ability to continue his career as a teacher. Multilingual, he simply forgot how to speak several languages. His personal life suffered as well. It’s really too distressing to recount. In March, he underwent open heart surgery—no blockage, but a fix of the birth defect on a valve. He was anticipating a painful nine-month convalescence. It wasn’t to be.
In the Craft, Gerry received the degrees of Freemasonry circa 1985 in Italy, while stationed there. I can’t recall which lodge that was, but it wasn’t the Grand Orient; it was a lodge that American servicemen would join. Upon returning to the United States, he affiliated with Publicity Lodge 1000. Rarely, if ever, missing a meeting, he preferred the sidelines to the progression of stations and places culminating in the East. He kept busy with ritual work, investigating committees, and other efforts. (When Richard Belzer joined Publicity, it was Gerry who conducted him in the degrees.) And I met him when he chaired the committee that investigated my petition for membership by affiliation. I drove him home from the meeting when I was elected, and we hit it off.
And then the health crises struck in 2015. It was awful to watch. He was in his mid 50s, and instead of mapping out his future while prospering in the present, he had to downgrade to a melancholy life forced upon him by physical and mental disabilities while his personal and professional lives collapsed.
Not being able to remain in one of the country’s most expensive areas, he opted to relocate to Virginia. He was granted a demit from Publicity 1000, and he had plans to affiliate with a lodge down there, but that never happened. It was hard enough just finding work and staying afloat, but I know he wanted to join a lodge, so I kept giving him information on opportunities there.
Being the keeper of much of his personal belongings during the years since he left the NYC area for Richmond, I was able to return almost all of it during the past year on visits to Virginia to attend Civil War Lodge of Research. I brought him his Army Green Service Uniform last October. Even more than the circumstances of his death, I just want to find out if he received the military funeral he wanted, and that he was buried in that uniform, as desired. I reached out to that DAV chapter, and will call again when they show up for their meeting this morning.
In addition to memento mori, never forget that life often is unfair and death can be cruel. Alas, my brother.
