Today’s column is the column I’ve been content to “keep on the backburner” for more than two decades, since I began penning this column in April 2002,
It is with heartbroken sadness I report the death of my beloved father Chester, who passed away at age 96 in the morning hours last Wednesday, Dec. 11 at our family’s farm in window view of the landscape he loved so much.
Chester Potempa, father of newspaper columnist Philip Potempa, is shown at age 90 in 2019 at the morning breakfast table at the family farm in San Pierre, Indiana, reading one of many daily newspapers delivered to his home. He credited the habit for his longevity and mental prowess. (Phil Potempa/Post-Tribune)
In recent weeks, including our family’s Thanksgiving dinner gathering, Mom and my older brothers and sisters stayed close to Dad and welcomed his homecoming after three weeks away at rehab for therapy following his successful heart valve replacement over the summer at University of Chicago on my 55th birthday on Aug. 13.
Dad’s struggle with walking following his summer surgery frustrated him, but he remained determined.
During the last week prior to his passing, Mom and my brothers and sisters all agreed Dad seemed more tired compared to his usual vim and vigor and energetic spirit. He would have celebrated his 97th birthday on July 12, 2026. After nearly a century of life on this earth, Dad was feeling worn out and was ready to be reunited with his brothers and sisters and parents for a Polish homecoming in Heaven while smiling from the clouds.
He was the last surviving sibling of the Potempa nine.
Dad was the youngest of his nine siblings and would proudly state he was “born on the family farm in 1929,” while all of his older siblings had been born in Chicago, delivered by “midwives,” in the apartment building where my grandparents lived until Grandpa Potempa left his city foundry job for a healthier opportunity to move to Indiana to buy our family farm.
Dad loved every part of farm living as much as he loved his family, neighbors and his Catholic faith.
He married Mom, Peggy Green of the Green Twins of Wheatfield, on Sept. 5, 1953. And with the help of Uncle Swede and Uncle Ed and others, he built our family ranch-style rust-stone home in 1957, just two cornfields away from Grandma and Grandpa Potempa’s main house and farm where he was born.
Our work habits and schedules are established from the start by our own role models and parents, and my Grandpa Potempa held the same work beliefs of long days in the field, continued by our father and instilled in his children with the added benefit of an ambitious and successful mother for a second role model. In addition to his love of farming, my dad managed to balance a long career in truck transportation. The bright-red semi-trucks sporting the iconic Jack Gray Transport logo, emblazoned with a wings-outstretched eagle, have been a familiar sight in the Midwest for more than 60 years.
Mary Potempa, center, is surrounded by her nine children in Spring 1971 in the front yard of the family farm in San Pierre, Indiana. From left to right, in the front row are daughters Loretta, Lilly, Judy, Lottie and Wanda. The back row includes, from left to right, John, Wally, Joe and Chester, the youngest and final surviving Potempa sibling. Chester Potempa died at age 96 at the family farm on Dec. 10, 2026. (Photo provided by Potempa Family)
The company’s owner John S. Gray, of Munster, who died at age 88 in March 2015, was another work mentor to my dad, who worked for Mr. Gray as a daily truck driver for 38 years until my dad retired in 1994.
Previously, my dad had worked for Mr. Gray’s father, John Gray Sr., and his wife, Bernice, until son John “Jack” Gray took over the business in 1951. Father John Gray died in 1975 and Bernice lived until age 95, when she died in 1998.
When Mr. Gray took over the family business in 1951, it was based in Hammond. He then moved it to Gary in 1968, operating at the International Port at Portage in 1975. He won the general cargo stevedore contract in 1989 and once boasted more than 1,000 employees with trucking terminals not only around Northwest Indiana but also as far as Wisconsin, and with truck-hauling contracts in 48 states.
Some of my greatest memories working with my dad continue to be the projects we put our heads together to complete, with the reward of sharing the success. Without both my parents’ love, support and guidance, I could never have achieved the career I love so much today.
For example, I have my dad and his high expectations to thank for the first A+ I ever received on a report card.
In sixth grade music class, when we had an assignment “to construct our own musical instrument,” my dad helped me create a full-scale wooden frame working harp, nearly as tall as I was at the time and resembling something as ornate as what Harpo Marx might have strummed. Meanwhile, my classroom friends’ creations, like Ann Scamerhorn’s “cigar box banjo” and Keith Spenner’s “comb and wax paper harmonica,” paled in comparison to what I dreamed up with my dad.
And for a Halloween party reader event I hosted in 2008, my dad helped me build an eight-foot tall, wooden frame Frankenstein’s Monster, which loomed over the scary affair.
A farmyard landmark which remains today is my favorite father and son (symbolic) connection embodied in the sturdy wooden footbridge he built for me over the water-filled ditches that divide our farm’s fields. Like Dad, that little bridge near our mailbox is strong and has stood the test of time for nearly half a century.
Before there were seven seasons of actor Richard Dean Anderson playing the title character of quick thinking “MacGyver” from 1985 to 1992, our dad was already fulfilling the same duties by inventing, designing, patching, repairing and using his great imagination.
Many readers have purchased his custom designed and built birdhouses throughout the decades at events.
And in December 2022, when I needed an old-time “Foley radio special effects wind machine,” Dad used an old garden hose crank spool and window shade to whip one up just in time for my holiday stage run of “Dickens’ Christmas Carol Show.”
As I’ve written so often in past columns and cookbooks, it was seeing Dad sitting across the kitchen table when I was a kid and observing him read the daily newspaper faithfully which helped instill my love of journalism. Dad especially loved the comics pages and his favorite funny panels starring “Blondie and Dagwood,” “Beetle Bailey,” “Nancy and Sluggo,” “Mutt and Jeff” and others, while also discussing with my mom what he had just read in the more recent “Ann Landers” advice column.
With Mom and my siblings and our greater expanded family of grandchildren and great grandchildren, cousins, neighbors and family friends, Dad’s memory, love of life and legacy will always remain.
Last weekend, my older sister Pam brought a slow cooker with her favorite recipe for an easy and hearty beef stew. Dad, Mom and myself enjoyed it with sister Pam and brother Tom for more than one satisfying meal. This recipe, shared today, is perfect winter menu comfort food and will now always be connected with memories of our father.
Our longtime small-town mortuary, O’Donnell Funeral Home, 302 Lane St. in North Judson, helped plan all the arrangements for Dad’s farewell with a visitation period from 3 to 7 p.m. CST Friday, Dec. 19 and a Catholic Rosary recited at 6:30 p.m. Visitation opportunity continues at 10 a.m. CST Saturday, Dec. 20 with casket viewing at All Saints Catholic Church, 201 W. Eliza St. in San Pierre prior to the funeral mass service at 11 a.m. CST and more details by calling 574-896-2149 or www.odonnellfhome.com.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is a radio host on WJOB 1230 AM. He can be reached at PhilPotempa@gmail.com or mail your questions: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Pam’s Easy Beef Stew
Makes 8 servings
2 pounds of good quality stew meat, cut into cubes
Seasoning salt, as needed
Flour for dusting
Splash of olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup of fresh mushrooms, rinsed and diced
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 cups carrots, diced
2 cans (14 ounce each) Cream of Mushroom soup
6 cups beef broth
Beef bouillon paste, to taste
Gravy browning, as needed
2 cups yellow potatoes, scrubbed with skins left on and cubed
1 bag (12 ounces) frozen peas
1 heaping tablespoon of cornstarch
Directions:
1. Toss prepared raw meat in seasoning salt and dust with flour. Set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Heat oil in skillet and add meat pieces to lightly brown on all sides. Add butter with onion, garlic and mushrooms and cook until onion and mushrooms are soft.
3. Place carrots with prepared meat on bottom of a slow cooker and cover with undiluted soup. Cook on low for 4 hours.
4. Add onion, mushrooms and broth with paste and cook 2 more hours.
5. Add gravy browning liquid to create desired darker traditional stew cover and adjust seasonings.
6. Add frozen peas and prepared potatoes during the final hour of cooking time.
7. Ladle some of the broth liquid into a cup and add cornstarch to make paste and add to thicken stew as desired.
