It is with a heavy heart that we share that our dear friend and neighbor, Fred Natkevi, died at Loyola Medical Center last week. He was never alone — Stephanie Simmons, Becki Zobel and Doug Zobel sat by his side for his brief hospitalization following a fall in front of his house Tuesday evening. He was surrounded by caring neighbors, and most certainly felt the love of his Wenonah Avenue family that night and into the following day.
Fred was born a Lithuanian national in 1933. In 1944, after enduring four years of Russian occupation, his family packed rations and as many belongings as they could fit into a wagon, and made plans to leave his grandfather’s ancestral home in Lithuania. His father made a trip into town the day before their departure to collect supplies for their trip. His horse returned alone. Fred never saw his father again. His mother made the difficult decision to flee their home on their own, becoming war refugees from the Eastern front when Fred was only 11.
Fred and his mother made it to Germany, outrunning the Russian army on several occasions. They lived in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in the allied American zone of post-war Germany for four years. In 1949, they were connected with a Lithuanian immigrant in Chicago who sponsored their resettlement here. Fred was 16.
He attended the University of Illinois, first at the campus located on Navy Pier, and later moving to Champaign to complete his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1959. In 1988, he earned his Master of Arts degree in Counseling Psychology from the Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago and worked in the mental health field, eventually retiring from his long career with The Salvation Army when he was 80. Both degrees still hang, framed, on the wall of his home, where he lived since the 1960s. And he didn’t lose his electrical engineering skills when he switched careers either. When he retired, he rewired his entire home from top to bottom in sturdy, metal conduit, screwed carefully to the plaster of his walls, never hidden, a constant reminder of his handiwork.
Fred was the husband of the late Lenora and the father of Diana Cushway, who grew up in the Wenonah house, attended OPRF, and eventually moved to California where she still lives with her husband Bill. Lenora died on June 16, 2002, at the age of 82.
Fred was a bit of a Renaissance man, as they say. He could speak several languages fluently. He was an accomplished photographer. Many of us on the block have framed photos of the Chicago skyline at night, the river lit up as bright at 2 a.m. as it is in the daylight, or of the desert — photos he took on one of his many trips West.
One of Stephanie’s first memories of Fred was seeing him walking home, very late at night, from one of his evening (or very early morning) photography excursions. He was an adventurer, and apparently never afraid to try something once. He was even an accomplished professional ballroom dancer. He and Lenora could cut a beautiful rug.
Later in life, you could often find Fred on his 2-mile-a-day walks, sitting in his favorite chair on the porch, inside studying the stock market, marking every dip or rise meticulously in a paper ledger he kept on his desk, or up on a ladder way too high, fixing something in or on the home he loved and was so proud of.
But most fulfilling for Fred, was his writing. He was prolific. He had 60-plus pieces published in Wednesday Journal, some of which he compiled into his memoir, My Turbulent Childhood, published in 2022. He was a proud member of the local Oak Park writers group called “The Scribblers,” where he had many meaningful relationships with fellow writers. He was, up until his last day, collecting supplies and ideas for a brilliant 11-year-old, up-and-coming writer on the block, whose newspaper brought Fred so much joy. “It’s amazing,” he said.
Fred’s was a life of deep meaning, and we believe there is no better way to mark a lifetime of meaning than to live as Fred did, with generosity and kindness. As he wrote in the dedication, “This book is in remembrance of all who were kind. They were compassionate even when they too suffered ravages of war.”