Kalev Juri ("K.J.") Linhein (September 14, 1946 ~ October 30, 2019)

A celebration of Juri's life will be held on Sunday, November 24 from 11am to 3pm at VFW Post 5892, 7620 Lancaster Pike in Hockessin, Delaware. 

The first thing you noticed about Juri was how strikingly handsome the guy was. Swashbuckling good looks with a great head of hair and a beard that flourished with his years.  The second thing you noticed about Juri was his voice, a Shakespearean baritone that would resonate from the stage lights to furthest balcony of a theater, which was not surprising when you learned that his life's passion was acting. 

Kalev Juri Linhein, known as K.J. by some and as Juri by most of his many friends, died peacefully after a short illness on the morning of October 30, his beloved English mastiff Dodge nearby, at his retreat deep in the Landenberg woods.  He was 73.   

Juri was born in a refugee camp in Germany 16 months after the end of World War II. His mother Anita had fled Soviet-occupied Estonia, while his father Karl died at Soviet hands, possibly in Siberia.

He and his mother emigrated to the U.S. in 1949 and settled in Little Silver, New Jersey, where she worked as a housekeeper.  He was adopted by Willa and Whitey Muller at age 8 after his mother died.  He went to local schools, often slipping away to nearby Asbury Park to enjoy the ocean, attended a year of college locally and then enlisted in the Army.   

Juri was sent to Vietnam after Officer Candidate and School and as a second and then first lieutenant was assigned as an Artillery Forward Observation Officer in 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment.  As a so-called Fire Support Officer, he directed artillery fire on enemy positions, an extremely dangerous assignment requiring him to work independently for long periods of time and sometimes behind enemy lines.  Among the medals he received were two Bronze Stars for bravery and although wounded, he turned down a Purple Heart. 

Like many veterans of the horrors of that war, Juri seldom spoke of his time in the Big Muddy save for a few anecdotes, including one about having endured the first several hours of the 1968 Tet Offensive in a whorehouse, where he said he had gone to buy some ice.  Yes, ice. 

Returning stateside, Juri hitchhiked to Woodstock for three days of peace, love and music and then enrolled at the University of Iowa where he received a bachelors degree in general studies, although he already was being drawn toward the theater. 

Over the next several years, Juri worked as a weatherman (the meteorological kind, not the revolutionary kind), storm chaser, used car salesman, and was briefly married.   

It was the late 1970s when Susie Ambry, proprietress of the Malt Shoppe on Main Street in Newark, saw that strikingly handsome guy with swashbuckling good looks and a great head of hair walk by. 

Susie and Juri later met at a party and married in 1982.  They adopted Katherine, their pride and joy, in 1990.  Susie predeceased him in April of this year after a long battle with cancer. 

Juri worked construction and was a proud, card-carrying member of Carpenters Union Local 626, but the siren call of acting grew ever louder.  He appeared in numerous stage productions, Dracula (photo, above) being his favorite role, did some Off Off Broadway acting, and played small parts in several B-movies, including Deer Crossing, a 2012 crime-drama-horror.   He would never compare that with Casablanca, which he was about to watch for the umpteenth time when we last chatted two days before his passing. 

Juri did not go quietly -- quiet was not in his kitbag, although he became more contemplative over the years -- and was properly exercised about the state of the nation that had called him to arms 50 years earlier.   He was proud of his Estonian heritage. 

A crossword fanatic, he could do the Sunday puzzle in under 30 minutes.    

Most of Juri's Facebook posts were well-aimed jeremiads against the Fool on the Hill, but he was adept at making a deeper point while turning a phrase, like this FB entry from the other day: 

Well . . . "well" . . . what a sweet word, "well"; it has many meanings . . . I was jes' gonna say "well" as in well it's been a darn fine day . . . or well the damn dog got caught up in the electric fence and shed a shit load of puppies, himself having been a stud dog before this happened.  He ain't well.  This should have never happened, but I guess the wires got somehow crossed. Oh well . . . Life ain't like this, but it's okay!  The dog is well . . . This did not happen..

I first met Juri not long before Susie espied him from that shop window.  We were fast friends and philosophical soul mates no matter where we went or what cards we were dealt in life.  I will miss him like a brother.