In his early 90s, Harold Kulat attended the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in his life and loved it.
He started doing aquatic aerobics and drove younger friends — in their 70s and 80s — to their doctor’s appointments.
During a conversation about Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on the night before he died last month at 100, “He was saying that Prince Charles should have married Camilla in the first place,” his son Randy Kulat said.
Mr. Kulat was retired for nearly 40 years, longer than the 35 years he taught history at Jones Commercial High School. He was president of the school’s first graduating class and the first alum to teach at Jones, according to news accounts when he joined the staff in 1956.
“He never stopped learning,” his son said.
He “would study some period in history each night,” said his daughter Pam Tawse, “and take extensive notes as if there was some major exam he had the next day.”
A Western Springs resident, Mr. Kulat had been the oldest living supporter of the International Association of Germans from Lithuania. At 99, he wrote a history of his immigrant family for the group.
“He is one of only a handful of people I have spoken to whose parents were old enough to have come here before the first World War,” said Owen M. McCafferty II, president and founder of the group. “His father was born in 1883.”
Young Harold grew up speaking German in Chicago’s Marshall Square neighborhood. His parents came from a community of people of German heritage in southwest Lithuania, then under Russian rule. His father Gustav immigrated “because he didn’t want to be conscripted into the czar’s army,” Randy Kulat said.
In 1907, his father arrived in the United States. His mother Bertha came in 1910. They met when Gustav Kulat roomed in the Chicago boarding house run by his wife’s aunt.
His father worked as a punch-press operator at International Harvester’s McCormick Works and kept a still in the basement during Prohibition. “He wanted to have his own schnapps and beer,” Mr. Kulat wrote in his personal history.
His mother fed her children pork chops and potato pancakes cooked in lard she bought by the bucket. He always loved pork knuckles and herring with vinegar or sour cream.
After high school, he joined the Army.
Serving in Occupied Japan after World War II, “He always talked about going to Hiroshima less than a year after the bomb and finding pieces of rock on the ground that had been fused with [dinner] plates,” his son said.
He went to college on the G.I. Bill at the University of Illinois branch that was then at Navy Pier. Later, he got a master’s degree in history from Northwestern University.
“Mr. Kulat was a lovely and patient history teacher,” said Marcy Sugar, who was one of his students and graduated in 1969. “We had a student who spoke English as a second language. He always made sure she understood the assignments. He also indulged my predilection for researching topics that weren’t assigned.”
He met his future wife Evelyn at the church their families attended: St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church at 23rd and California.
“When I hear young and older people today talking about meeting eligible partners, I say, ‘Go to church.’ It is better than the Internet,” Mr. Kulat wrote.
His son Rob Kulat said his father reminded him of Andy Griffith, star of the 1960s TV show about the wry and wise sheriff of the fictional town of Mayberry. “He just got along with everyone,” he said.
At 92, Mr. Kulat was part of a family entourage on a trip to New York City for his granddaughter Claire’s graduation from Barnard College, striking up conversations with strangers on the subway. When he walked past an induction service at Grant’s Tomb where new members of the military were being sworn in, he approached them, introduced himself, and they all thanked him for his service, according to his family.
In addition to his daughter and two sons, Mr. Kulat is survived by another son, Brad, and 10 grandchildren.
Services have been held.
“He wasn’t afraid of dying,” Randy Kulat said, “and had done all he wanted to do.”
