Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, July 25, 2008
Joe Orso: La Crosse native’s life, comics were shaped by a deep faith
John Harold Bush was 52 when he died.
It was non-smoker's lung cancer that overcame his body.
This Wednesday marks the second anniversary of the former La Crosse man's death.
John was one of more than 2.4 million people who died in the United States in 2006, according to a National Center for Health Statistics report.
That many people is impossible to comprehend.
What's not impossible to comprehend is John, a man who blended his faith and his career in comics, the man in the photograph on top of Marge Bush's television set, next to the glass cross and the remote control.
“I knew he couldn’t live the way he was living,” said Marge, John’s 84-year-old mother, talking about the cancer that worked its way to her son’s brain. “He couldn’t exist that way, so you have to let the Lord take over.“
She gazed at the carpet, tapping her fingers on her right knee.
“It just takes your heart. It takes a chunk out of it,” she said, sitting in her La Crosse home.
Marge, a lifelong member of St. John’s United Church of Christ, prays for John every night. She also prays nightly for her husband, who died of congestive heart failure, her brothers and her mom and dad. “The collection,” she calls them.
John’s drawing started early.
When he was barely crawling, he’d take a pencil and draw circles on top of circles on top of circles.
Growing up, he continued drawing — “more for his own amazement” than anything else, Marge said.
He went to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, married, started a family of his own, and made a career drawing comics from his home and a local coffee shop in Edina, Minn.
At his funeral, people laughed as well as cried, said Nancy Bush, 47, John’s wife.
Family sprinkled his ashes on Grandad Bluff, at homes and even found a way to have some sprinkled on the “G” at the center of Lambeau Field.
In 2007, a collection of John’s religiously themed comics, titled “The Funny Shape of Faith,” was published by Augsburg Fortress and is available through online booksellers.
“Given his sense of humor,” Nancy said, “people will be surprised at how deep his faith was.”
He didn’t wear it on his sleeve, she said, but it formed his morals and helped him raise his children.
Her family keeps an urn with John’s ashes in the kitchen.
“So he is really part of our everyday life,” Nancy said. “(The kids) talk about him and bring him into a conversation on a regular basis.”
And 13-year-old Jack has taken over his father’s job of drawing the cartoon for the T-shirt sold at the annual Edina Highlands Elementary School carnival.
Joe Orso works part time for the La Crosse Tribune and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Opinions in this column are his own. He can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8429.
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