John Robert Koontz lived a full life, and lived each day with kindness, responsibility, respect for others, integrity, quiet wisdom, and was the most humble person I’ve ever met. He loved books, he loved to learn, and was always reading in his free time. He had an extensive vocabulary, was articulate, and intelligent. Simultaneously, he was easygoing, quiet, and humble. He really cared for others, and minded the people whose presence he was in with respect.

He had these age-old values he shared with the “Greatest Generation.” Those values were of resilience, duty, and quiet strength. He himself was part of the “Silent Generation,” and he had those characteristics of doing what needed to be done without drawing attention to it, respect and courtesy, hard work and perseverance without complaint, modesty, and most of all, a quiet strength. He held onto these values as his foundation, while also being forward-facing and having an avid interest in and fascination with technological advancements. He was wise and a good man.

He was born on December 30, 1939 in San Jose, California. He was the son of Mamie and Homer Koontz, and had two younger siblings: Dennis and Dianna. In school, he was athletic and played a variety of sports, and lettered in swimming. He had many friends and they would be welcomed into the house by Mamie, so they would often hang out at his home, with friends often going in and out. San Jose in the 1940s and 1950s was a hotspot for car culture, drag racing, cruising down the boulevards, and spending time hanging out at drive-ins on weekend and summer nights. As a teenager, he worked on cars, built hotrods, and would cruise around town with his friends, and told many nostalgic stories. One such story was cruising down the street on a Friday night in a freshly washed and waxed car and seeing a friend next to him and rolling down the window to say hi, or showing off his car to the pretty girls at the local popular Drive-in Burger joint where people would gather. My grandma Mamie also proudly told me stories when I was young about how he built a car engine from scrap parts in the garage.

He worked hard all of his life. He talked about his first job being at a pet store when he was 14 years old. He also had a newspaper route. He went door to door as a teenager selling sewing machines. He also sold tires at Sears. He put himself through college and was the first person in his family to graduate college with a bachelor’s degree. After graduating, he went to Hawaii and bartended and lived with friends and surfed for six months. Then he returned to California and went to work for corporations, and by the time I was born, he had worked his way up to senior executive management, and I always knew him as the vice president of several major corporations. There were many times in high school that I remember watching him work from home on the weekends, quietly and diligently.

He has always loved and respected the ocean. In his younger adult years, while working for a corporation, he lived on his sailboat in the San Francisco area. He told me stories about how he would take clients out sailing on his boat. He was an avid and skilled sailor. He also enjoyed the water sports of surfing, waterskiing, and scuba diving.

He worked in the technology industry, and told enthusiastic stories about microchips and how he watched the advancing size and capability, and how he watched technology progress throughout the decades. He had genuine joy when he held his first iPhone and iPad, and said that after working in technology from the 1960s to early 2010s, it was so interesting to see how far things had come. He lived a lifetime seeing so much change in technology and it fascinated him.

He was also well traveled. He traveled domestically and internationally for work: Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, France, Germany, and England were just a few places where he spent a lot of time working internationally.

He was a devoted father to me, his daughter. My mom recently told me stories of when I was very young, and how he would arrive home from work, and immediately play with me in the sandbox, kneeling happily in the sand while he was still in his suit, and her watching from the window. She said that despite working hard all day, he would come home and was joyfully attentive to me. She said we had a bond from the very beginning, and I was lucky that it was a bond that stayed strong throughout my life, and as I write this, he is still my best friend. He was an amazing father to me every day of my life, and we were best friends throughout my life. There were many memories, but underneath all of them, he made me feel respected, cherished, and loved consistently.

My dad taught me to work hard, believe in my dreams, to travel the world, and to be kind and treat people with respect. He once told me that the song, “My Way,” by Frank Sinatra should be the theme song of my life. As I listen to it now, I realize that it was also his song, because that song reminds me of him and how he lived his life.

He painted beautiful paintings over the last two decades. He enjoyed long morning walks outside as part of his routine, his hat and sunglasses resting on his desk and ready to go at all times. He also spent most of his time every day reading books during his retirement.

He passed away with me by his side, in his home in Henderson, Nevada. He was 86 years old (the same age as his mother Mamie, whom he had a great respect for), when he passed away on April 24, 2026. He was a man who tried all kinds of new things in his life, and really chose to experience life, and really live, and all the while, do it genuinely, honestly, and kindly.

May he rest in peace with the Lord. Amen.