- Date Of Death: January 30, 2017
- State: Illinois
Gabriel E. Halasz was born on September 9th, 1955 in Budapest, Hungary. At the end of 1956, his family became refugees from that country and fled under extremely cold and harsh conditions over the border into Austria and then finally to the United States. At this time, Gabriel was barely one and a half years old. The family settled in Chicago. Gabriel went to St. Andrew’s School on Addison Ave. and learned English quickly. At the beginning of these school years, the family moved to the Addison-Janssen-Greenview area and it is here that, in time, an ever growing group of friends with members mostly from the area, but some from without, came into being. Here is where Gabriel came to be known as “Gob”. I think it’s because when his parents called him from play, they used the short form of his name in Hungarian (“Gábor”) and that sounded like Gob. The members had wonderful times, fun times, scary and sad times, but a bond grew between them that lasts to this day, in some of them less, in some of them to more of an extent. But the memories will surely never be forgotten by any of them.
Gob went to Lane Tech after St. Andrew’s and graduated from that high school. He then went to DeVry Technical College and finished there, too. After many different jobs, he finally became an electronics technician and found good positions in that field for many years. Though he never married, Gabriel did have several girlfriends, including a girl in the Philippines and this looked quite promising, though it didn’t work out in the end.
After his father, Zoltan, passed away in 1998, Gabriel devotedly took care of his mother till her last years and she passed away in 2009.
Now on the 31st of January, 2017, after a prolonged illness, Gabriel has passed away, far too soon in his life.
One last thing: I am sure that we haven’t seen the last of Gob. He’ll be waiting for us over on the other side when our time, too, has finally come. For despite everything Gabriel ever did or said, despite not really being very religious, he often told me of his belief in Jesus Christ as his Saviour – so he was born again. I know it, I was there!
