John Blumbeks
HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE, AR - John Blumbeks passed away on January 18, 2021. He and his wife, Marilyn, were residents of Hot Springs Village, AR where they had retired in 2012.
John was born in Latvia on October 4, 1939, the son of Zanis and Anna Blumbeks and younger brother of Brigita and Edvins. Zanis was the vice president of a sugar beet company. When Germany invaded Latvia, the family tried to escape across the Baltic Sea. Although very young, John remembered being carried by his grandmother to the seaport from their inland home. The family was captured by the Germans and placed in a concentration camp for displaced persons until the war ended.
Following the war, the Blumbeks were sponsored by a farming family in Como, Mississippi, to sharecrop. Sugar beets were not grown in Mississippi, so Zanis left his family every weekday to drive to Memphis to learn carpentry. A proud moment for the family was when they were able to move to Memphis and soon become Naturalized American citizens.
John attended White Station School and was welcomed into the homeroom in the eighth grade by Marilyn Reiter (now Blumbeks). He loved sports and excelled in football, basketball, track and baseball and scholarship, graduating eleventh in a class of 212 students. He is still remembered by classmates as scoring the final basket in a game against Central, shooting from across the court with two seconds remaining and securing the win for his team by one point. He was elected Most Athletic in the White Station Hall of Fame in 1959. John then attended Memphis State University on an academic scholarship and was drafted into the army upon graduation.
After his army service, John taught school at Melrose and the newly built Northside High School in the vocational education department. He left teaching to become a builder and owned John Blumbeks Construction Company, custom building homes in Memphis and Germantown. He was also a Realtor/associate at Davies-sowell Realtors.
John Blumbeks was a loving husband, adoring and adored father and grandfather to his four daughters and eight grandchildren, one precious great-grandchild, and another great-grandchild expected soon. He took tremendous pride in all of them and his words of kindness and love, along with gentle instructions of the way to live and love will never be forgotten.
He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Marilyn, and daughters, Stacey Griggs (Tommy), Dana Collins, Marci Campbell, and Gina Sharp (Heyward). Nothing made him happier than phone calls and visits from his beloved grandchildren. They are Sarah Bloch (John), Zackary Jordan Fenderson (Caitlyn), Chloe Reiter Griggs, Maggie Ward (Joey), Gabriel Jon-murray Grindstaff, Sarah Grace Grindstaff, Kaylee Alexis Sharp and Jackson Heyward Sharp. Their “Teti” was an armchair coach for all the little athletes.