Casket salesman laid to rest in one of his models
John “Jack” Gibbons used to refer to his products as “underground bungalows” or “subterranean condominiums.” He’s in the Tulip model. One of the nation’s longest- serving, most successful casket salesmen, he picked it out a few decades ago because he liked its simplicity.
“We call it the Gibbons family special,” said his daughter Sally Milito, “because everyone in our family has been buried in it.”
Though he didn’t go on sales calls anymore, the 91- year- old was still getting commissions until he died March 4. He’d built up a loyal customer base among the funeral homes where he sold the rectangular reposi- tories from Curtis Casket Company.
“From 1948 until the day he died, he was still employed,” said Del Pratt, a general manager for sales and distribution at Curtis Plus.
His almost 70- year career is “a damn- near record,” said Michael Beardsley, historian for the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America.
After Mr. Gibbons returned from serving in the Navy in World War II, “he only had one job,” his daughter said, “and that was at Curtis Casket.”
In the halcyon days of manufacturing following the war, Chicago was home to Curtis and more than 40 other casket makers, according to Pratt.
Mr. Gibbons “told me that he loved his oc- cupation and could not wait to get in his car in the morning,” said Joel VerPlank, president of Curtis Plus. “He told me that he would sing going down the freeway between calls.”
He knew every funeral director “from Indiana, to downstate Illinois, to the Wisconsin border,” said Kevin O’Donnell, a director at Grein funeral home, 2114 W. Irving Park.
If clients asked for an extra- wide or extra- long casket — or maybe a leopard- print interior — “he got whatever you wanted,’’ O’Donnell said.
In 1986, he handled the custom order from A. R. Leak Funeral Home for slain drug kingpin Flukey Stokes. “It had a copper tank liner and a glass top,” Pratt said. “He was laid out with his pager and a coffee cup.”
Still, that looked conservative compared to the “Cadillac coffin” for Stokes’ son, Willie “The Wimp.” After he was shot, Stokes ordered a casket for his son from a rival manufacturer tricked out to resemble a Cadillac Seville. Famed bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan even sang about it.
With Mr. Gibbons’ sunny outlook, corny jokes and uncanny ability to drop in at a funeral home just as the undertakers were sitting down to a tasty lunch, he built rapport and relationships, O’Donnell said. Mr. Gibbons especially liked it when South Side funeral directors ordered in Vito & Nick’s pizza, according to friends and relatives.
“His customers wanted to see the latest model of caskets, but only after asking to see the latest crazy pair of socks he was wearing,’’ said his son John.
“He’d cross his leg and you’d see these colored socks with polka dots and bright colors,” said funeral director Bernie Dalcamo Jr.
People liked him. And they knew he was raising six kids on commission. So when he asked funeral directors if they’d order the purple or green caskets Curtis couldn’t seem to unload, “because it was Jack, people would buy them,” O’Donnell said.
“And, they’d sit on their showroom floors for years.”
On weekends, when Curtis delivery drivers were off, “we used to deliver them in our family station wagon,” his daughter said.
Young John grew up the oldest of seven kids in St. Brendan’s parish in Englewood. His Irish parents were from Louisburgh, County Mayo. He graduated from De La Salle Institute.
He met Peggy O’Neill, who would become his wife of 66 years, at McGinty’s pub at 73rd and Cottage Grove. “Beer was a nickel. My mom ordered a mixed drink for a dime,” his daughter said. “He hoped she was worth it, and she was!”
He and his wife enjoyed cruises to the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. They also visited Europe and Israel. But, “They felt they really made it when their children were all college graduates,” according to their son.
As Mr. Gibbons put it: “Not bad for a kid from 69th Street and a girl from Gage Park.”
He enjoyed any restaurant with a buffet. “A Rainbow Cone, and that’s all he needed,” said his daughter.
He and his wife most recently lived at the Admiral at the Lake, where “he never ever went more than one or two days without one of [ his] kids visiting him,” said his daughter.
Mr. Gibbons is also survived by his daughters Peggie Vizza, Marie Ryan and Nancy Gibbons; son Kevin; sisters Marie Luebke and Kathryn Alesia; a brother, James, and 10 grandchildren.
He was buried with two different socks to represent the colleges of two of his grandchildren: the University of Southern California and the Virginia Military Institute.