Goodbye Helicopter Zombie
By T. W. Burger
Old age is a strange country, stranger than I ever expected before I entered it.
Not sure when that was. I’m 77 now. I crossed the border sometime in the last six or seven years: More and harder-to-pronounce medications. More and harder-to- pronounce doctors.
The fields on which I have lived my life are now smaller, flatter and less interesting. The challenges have devolved from exploring them to just trying to stay present. Too many of those with whom I romped and sometimes struggled have gone missing. Especially some of those few people who I think of as foundational, people who are somehow an integral part of who I am. Too many of those have left the field, leaving me diminished, less “here” than I was.
One of those died August 2.
It’s often funny how one first meets those who become part of what makes you, well, you.
As a reporter for the Gettysburg Times many years ago, I sat Jim Krut’s office at the Adams Electric Cooperative talking about God knows what. It was not an unusual occurrence: Jim was the go-to press guy for the utility and had been for a long time, so I had spoken with him often enough that we were both comfortable with one another.
Jim was a former newspaper reporter and editor but seemed normal otherwise.
He had also served as an army medic in Vietnam but seemed normal despite that. For that latter service he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with "V" device for valor and the Purple Heart, something I didn’t learn until I read his obituary.
Somehow, during whatever the subject of the interview was, we drifted into talking about our favorite movies.
It turns out that this very tall, lanky, good-humored man I had known for years in the role of an official spokesman for a public utility was also a monster.
Not in real life. In the movies, most famously in George Romero’s 1978 hit “Night of the Living Dead.” I had seen the film back in the day when I had been a fan of the genre,
It turned out that he had been in quite a few films, many of them in the horror category. He even got me an unpaid gig as an extra in “Zombie Girl Diary” for a newspaper story. I had fun, but the movie was never released because of some production problems. I had such a good time being a zombie that I forgot to say my one line, which, if I remember correctly, was: “Aaaaargh!”
Jim’s helicopter zombie was only on screen for a matter of seconds, but in one of those odd happenstances that occur in popular culture, Jim remained a celebrity to zombie fans all over the planet, appearing at fan conventions here and abroad, People bought Helicopter Zombie T-shirts and action figures and other stuff and paid to get selfies taken with him.
After we both retired from our prospective jobs, we joined the same R.O.M.E.O. (Retired Old Men Eating Out) weekly group where we met for coffee then caught a movie. COVID and other factors stopped the gathering and the movies, but we adapted and met via ZOOM, drank our own coffee and talked about movies, favorite tv shows, dogs, bad habits and the other things geezers find to talk about. Nobody seemed to mind that a lot of the same stories surfaced every few weeks. For years, the membership included three retired journalists, a retired art professor/automotive engineer/Philly street kid-hot rodder, and a retired submarine commander. The conversations are never dull.
The Navy guy left the field a few years ago. And now Jim. The three of us who remain are going to have to work harder.
The announcement of his death on Facebook drew an avalanche of bereavement. Boiled down, they all said he was a wonderful human and would be terribly missed.
I can’t do any better than that.
When anybody I know has died, I usually say that their passing leaves the world less bright, less interesting. That is true in spades in this case.
A note expressly for Jim: If you can read this, I have not missed the irony of somebody famous for being a zombie actually dying. If I go to the viewing, I'll be keeping an eye on you.
T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks,
He is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.
He can be contacted at twburger@comcast.net
