Jack Cady: writer, teacher

Novelist Jack Cady was a professor who didn't look like one, a writing guru more eager to teach the freshmen and non-English majors at Pacific Lutheran University than the older kids who knew better what they were doing.

His classroom philosophy? "That it's not just about the writing, but about a way of seeing and being in the world," said colleague Tom Campbell.

Former student Marjorie Rommel said Mr. Cady considered whatever he had taught to be his legacy.

Mr. Cady, best known for his fantasy/horror/science-fiction work including "The Hauntings of Hood Canal" (2001), "The Off Season" (1996) and "Street: A Novel" (1994), died Wednesday (Jan. 14) of bladder cancer at Jefferson General Hospital in Port Townsend.

He was 71.

Wife Carol Orlock, also a writer, laughed slightly as she described his distinct look. With angular bones and a face that is said to have reminded students of their grandfathers, Mr. Cady looked more like the truck driver and warehouse worker he once was than a professor emeritus awarded the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction in 1972, the Bram Stoker Award for science fiction and a formidable list of other honors throughout his career.

The Columbus, Ohio, native loved to camp and to buy books by other Northwest writers, but family and friends say he loved most to write and teach. One of his books was "The American Writer: Shaping a Nation's Mind," a survey of American literature.

"There was a moral dimension to his writing. There were good things and bad things for him," Campbell said. "Writing was a way for him to get things right."

Rommel, who knew him for 30 years as a teacher and mentor, ventures that Mr. Cady was drawn to the horror and fantasy genres because their stories served as something like "the sugar that made the medicine go down." He saw books as a way to address his concerns — about the connectedness of communities and planetary morality — without being preachy.

He was also self-deprecating about his own work, remembers Judy Hartman, co-owner of Imprint Bookstore Ltd. in Port Townsend, where Mr. Cady often shopped.

"Whenever he had a new book out, he'd come in and check up on it, make sure we had gotten it in on time," she said.

He argued about poetry with Campbell, a professor and English department chairman at Pacific Lutheran University. He was game for discussions with anyone in whom he detected an ounce of integrity and seriousness. He also had a "gruff voice and big whoppin' heart," Campbell said.

In Mr. Cady's earlier years, he served in the Coast Guard in Maine, headed a landscape construction business, taught at the University of Washington for about five years and then taught creative writing at PLU for 13 years.

Besides Orlock, he is survived by four children from a previous marriage and two sisters.

Contributions to the Jack Cady Scholarship Fund can be sent to Pacific Lutheran University, Development Office, 1010 122nd St. S., Tacoma, WA 98447.

A remembrance service is being planned because Mr. Cady never wanted a formal funeral, Orlock said. She hopes to arrange the service for March 20, Mr. Cady's birthday.

Young Chang: 206-748-5815 or ychang@seattletimes.com