In the autumn of 1969, my sister Debbie asked a question I have never been able to improve on: “Couldn’t Jesus get anyone else to repair bicycles in heaven and let George stay here?”
To understand why it mattered, you have to know about the bicycles.
In 1968, my parents found their first house on a corner lot in Hicksville, New York. My father was a computer hardware engineer who traveled by train and by car to customer sites up and down the east coast; Hicksville put him close to the Long Island Rail Road and within reasonable driving distance of wherever he needed to be. The house was small — two bedrooms, one for my parents and one for their three little girls. It grew a little tighter in 1969 when our youngest arrived, and my father put an addition on the back.
We made our friends within the block. Among them were the Lehmann girls, whose family home was multigenerational: Mrs. Lehmann’s parents lived upstairs in what functioned as a self-contained apartment, separate and yet part of everything. The grandfather’s name was George Kunz. We called him Grandpa Kunz.
He became our neighborhood grandpa. My mother’s mother was in Ireland. My father’s mother was forty minutes away in Lake Ronkonkoma. Grandpa Kunz was on our block, and he spent much of his time in the way that matters most to children: fixing bicycles. Bent wheels, snapped chains, cables frayed past usefulness — he took whatever came to him and returned it rideable. The whole neighborhood knew where to bring a damaged bike.
We knew too.
George Kunz died suddenly in September 1969.
Debbie was the most heartbroken of all of us. The exact words belong to memory rather than record — fifty-five years is a long time, and I will not pretend otherwise — but the spirit of what she said has never left me. When we were told about George’s death, Debbie asked why Jesus couldn’t find someone else to repair bicycles in heaven and let George stay here.
Let Jesus get his own bicycle repairman.
When I went looking for George properly — the way you go looking for someone who has stayed in your memory for half a century — I found him on Find a Grave and learned something I either hadn’t known or had once known and lost. George Arnold Kunz had served as a firefighter with the Hicksville Fire Department. He was elected its 31st Fire Chief in 1947, serving through 1948.
He was more than the man with the tools and the patience for a bent wheel.
He was a firefighter as well, just like a lot of our other neighbors and friends.
Sources
George Arnold Kunz, memorial record. Find A Grave. findagrave.com/memorial/204577625/george-arnold-kunz. Accessed May 2026.