Jan 31, 1934 – Mar 29, 2023
John Francis Pletka Jr was born on January 31, 1934 to John Joseph Pletka and his wife Frances in Tyndall, South Dakota. He was the oldest of four boys, with his brothers Joe, Bob and Bernard. His father worked for Standard Oil as a fuel driver, delivering diesel and oil to the farms surrounding Tyndall. During high school, he played football as a guard, and worked part-time in the soda shop, from which originated his life-long love of ice cream as his favorite dessert.
After high school he attended Southern State Teacher’s College, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Math and playing football. Upon graduating, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life (but knowing he didn’t want to teach math), he joined the US Army where he was able to utilize his Math degree to work in the radar corp, spending most of his time at Fort Bliss in Texas.
Right around the time he graduated, he would meet the woman he would end up marrying at an party organized by his cousin Mary Jo. After finding out Janet Carol Baron was committed to becoming a Catholic nun, he remembered remarking to his cousin “What a pity.”
After leaving the Army, he flew to Florida for a job interview with General Electric; a job he would ultimately accept and keep throughout his entire career. While with General Electric, he was the chief troubleshooter and trainer of their industrial printers and spent weeks at a time flying around the country visiting customers up and down the west coast, Chicago and New York. During this time he was traveling so often that he maintained apartments in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Seattle though he spent most of his time in Los Angeles. After nearly 12 years of this, he was ready to settle down and he chose Phoenix as his permanent home. Around this time, Honeywell purchased GE’s computing division and John went with them, still traveling, but spending more time teaching and training new engineers. He didn’t have too many stories to tell of those working years, but apparently he had time to become an expert at pool as over 50 years later watching his son and grandkids play he remarked “I see you’re still playing straight ball” then proceeded to give us instructions on how to add spin.
Out of the blue, his cousin Mary Jo contacted him one day in 1968. Janet – the girl he had met at the party all those years ago had decided to leave the convent and had asked about him. Jan was still living in Sioux Falls at the time, so John immediately began a correspondence with her over mail and phone and soon began discussing marriage. This was one of the original long distance romances, even to the point where they would mail catalogs back and forth, circling the rings they would want to buy. After a relatively short courtship, John and Jan planned to get married in Tyndall, South Dakota on 25 Jan, 1969 just a week before his 36th birthday. The day before their wedding, tragedy struck as John’s dad unexpectedly passed away due to a heart attack in the midst of a blizzard. Despite this, the wedding proceeded, though it was a more somber affair.
After getting married, they moved into the house they had picked out together in Phoenix. Jan was unable to have children and they began considering adoption. They applied with Catholic Charities and after waiting nearly a year, a baby boy became available. John Francis Pletka III was born on May 20, 1973 and adopted by John and Jan Pletka two months later. A few years later, they were to find their life’s calling after being told the wait for another baby would be a long one and there were mentally and physically handicapped children looking for homes.
Jamie Robert Pletka (b 1975-06-06, d 2016) was the first of many that they took into their home. Jamie was born severely autistic, but they adopted him at the age of two and he would live with them for the rest of his life. Throughout the years, John and Jan accepted the kids that no one else wanted and from 1980 until 2017 they almost always had at least two severely mentally and physically handicapped kids living in their house, taking care of them as foster parents. The kids were all given long term homes with the Pletka’s – Sam Garza (over 30 years), Magnalina Certa (18 years) as well as many others whose conditions caused them to die young. The responsibility of looking after the children made it difficult to get away, but John and Jan formed a network of other parents in similar situations and they would look after each other’s children when needed.
In 1979 John and Jan would sell their little 3 bedroom house on Rovey Ave and move 4 miles away to their forever home on an acre of land across the street of an orange orchard where he lived until 2020. At the time, this part of Phoenix was zoned rural and John quickly set up a mini farm on his land. He was a bit of a brown thumb when it came to crops, but he was a genius at raising animals. Thankfully his next door neighbor was a farmer and for the next 15 years they would trade turkeys, chickens and eggs for vegetables. Despite only having a single acre, he raised goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, peacocks and annually he would buy a calf in the spring to butcher in the winter. Some of the children they took care of couldn’t tolerate cow milk, so every morning Jan would milk the goats (her favorite was named Janelle after her childhood friend). For many Christmases we would pick oranges and grapefruit from the trees and mail them to our relatives stuck in the colder climates of South Dakota and Nebraska.
As a father, John was loving and kind. Slow to anger and encouraging without being pushy. I played sports from the time I was 5 through high school, and I don’t recall him ever missing a soccer game or track meet that whole time. Some of my fondest memories growing up were spending time with my dad building fences and barns, taking care of the animals before school and doing chores together. When I was 12 they bought me my first computer for Christmas, a Commodore 64. This was the very earliest age of computing where only businesses and hobbyists had them, and John had a group of coworkers at Honeywell that formed a “computing group” that met once a month in a conference room in the Honeywell factory. He started bringing me to these meetings where I at 13 and 14 years old would get into deep discussions with the professionals there about programming and computing. These meetings and the respect he and his colleagues showed me factored heavily into my career choices and ultimately quality of life.
Aside from his family and his farm, John’s greatest joy came from camping in the deserts and mountains of Arizona. Before his first kid was adopted, John and Jan used to spend every weekend at their favorite camping spot high up in the Arizona mountains on the shores of Willow Springs lake. The regulars there were shocked when one weekend they heard a baby crying from their tent. A mere three weeks after adopting their first son, they were back in the mountains, only now there was a third. Over the years John graduated from a tent, to a truck shell, to a tent trailer to a popup trailer, then a full camper trailer and finally a motorhome. The only indulgences they really invested in were new gear to allow them to enjoy the mountains in more comfort. Every vacation was spent in the wilderness fishing and spending time with his wife and two adopted sons, and most of the family stories and lore came from these adventures. It was his and Jan’s dream to become campground hosts when they retired, but there was always one more kid needing them and they kept being foster parents until they physically couldn’t anymore at the age of 80.
John and Jan were finally forced to give up their foster kids due to age and deteriorating health in 2015, though Jamie continued to live with them. Earlier that year, their son John and his wife (Stephanie) and 4 kids moved back to Arizona from Georgia. In March of 2016 his son Jamie passed away from complications from H1N1 flu, pneumonia and an infection caught in the hospital. For over 40 years, Jan’s days were spent taking care of kids and with the passing of Jamie, Jan remarked that she felt her life’s work was over and she was ready to move on with the satisfaction of a life well lived. She started to decline and passed away on October, 29, 2016 from complications due to COPD.
John’s last years were happy ones. He continued to live at home for another two years, then moved in with his son and family in Scottsdale for a year where the grandkids got a chance to really know him. He was on a walker, but still active and his mind was sharp and Stephanie would take him on frequent road trips to Fountain Hills, or to some of his favorite spots in the mountains. In 2018 he traveled to South Dakota for his cousin Mary Jo’s funeral (the one who was instrumental in introducing him to his wife). For years his responsibilities with kids had kept him close to home and prevented him from traveling, and he treasured this trip and his chance to see everyone.
He moved into an independent living campus in 2021 where he, along with the rest of world mastered the use of Zoom on his iPad to meet with his friends from his working years with Honeywell. He continued to live independently and his mind stayed sharp until passing away on Mar 29, 2023 after a short stay in the hospital surrounded by his family.
He will be missed
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