mesothelioma

CEDAR RAPIDS — John Saathoff so loved his wife, Bev, that he has immortalized her larger than life on their barn.
From the 5-by-9-foot portrait, Bev's blue eyes gaze past the painting's permanent greenery onto the five acres of immaculate yard and gardens they tended together along North Center Point Road. To her right romps Cass, the chow-huskie mix that still roams the grounds with John. To her left plays Jack, the squirrel they adopted from the wild and raised together.

"She was the most kind, nicest lady that ever walked the Earth," says John, 64, as if, more than six years after her death, Bev can still hear his voice.
Bev died Dec. 3, 2002, at age 53, about three months into a battle with mesothelioma, a fast-moving and often fatal asbestos cancer usually diagnosed late in its progression. Although Bev and John had not married until the Sept. 25 before her death, their lives together spanned 17 years.
They met on a blind date in 1985. Each divorced, neither was in a hurry to marry again.

"God, she was good lookin'," he says. "I thought this wasn't going to work out."

On that first date, John didn't think he stood a chance with this woman who would advance from secretary to senior buyer in a 24-year career at Rockwell Collins.

A self-professed loner, John tends to his own business, which happens to be real estate development and erecting buildings. That included a prospective bar along 16th Avenue SW. When he mentioned installing brick, Bev piped up.

"I'd like to learn to lay brick," she said.
"Oh, yeah, right," John said. 

 

That Saturday, she joined him on the job and learned to lay brick, as straight and true as any man, which laid the foundation for their future.
Today, even though Bev is gone, John's love for her remains eternal. Whenever he thinks of her, he can open the top drawer of his bedroom dresser to read special occasion cards she gave him, often as he prepared to leave for work or his racing hobby. Before her signature she would write "Come home safe."
Together they loved Corvettes, animals, flowers and wide open space. In 1998, they bought this acreage and tore down the old house to build their own. The barn, raised in 1914 on a field stone foundation, was too unique to remove. Reroofed and resided, the barn required 18 gallons of paint stripper and hundreds of hours of hand-numbing labor to restore its stones.
The home, the barn, the gardens became their special place. Even now John spends two days a week caring for the property.

"She always liked flowers," he says. "I always feel I've got the responsibility to keep up what she had and to better it."

"Bev was so special it took a long time to figure it out," he says. "I wanted to do something other people wouldn't."

On his travels, John marveled at the colorful, artistic barn quilts that give each structure an identity. He had a vision — a barn portrait.

After spotting a reproduction of Grant Wood's "American Gothic" on a friend's barn, John contacted the artist, Mark Benesh of Mount Vernon, to create Bev's portrait. John installed it on the barn's south face last fall, adding a lip above to protect it from birds and the weather.

 

Every time John returns home from a trip to Cedar Rapids, he is welcomed by the portrait of his wife. He recalls the good times and the tender ones, too, including their marriage after her diagnosis and a later day when she called him to the basement for a surprise.

As a Monticello youngster, Bev played the accordion. But she wouldn't play for John, not until that day she told him she'd been practicing on the sly. That day, she picked up the accordion and played for half an hour.

"That," John says, "meant as much to me as anything."
So you see why John has no intention of seeking another spouse, why he says "There was only one Bev," why he had this portrait painted for their barn.

"If she came back," he says, "she'd be smiling like a lark."