John Wick obit 12/13/24

Butler residents of a certain age might remember an eye doctor whose practice was a fixture on East Cunningham Street for nearly a quarter of a century. Dr. John L. Wick, passed away on Tuesday, Dec. 10, in Butler at the age of 87.

Wick’s practice opened in Butler in 1973, after he earned his medical degree from Temple University in 1963. His patients remembered him as a kindhearted man who was willing to waive costs whenever appropriate.

“People still say to me, ‘Oh, your dad was so kind,’” said John’s daughter, Candace. “There are certain families who maybe couldn’t pay and he would just let them go, no problem. It was a different era. You can’t do that in medicine anymore.”

That was the case for one teenage girl who came to Dr. Wick one day wearing thick “Coke-bottle” glasses.

“He fit her for contacts for no charge, because she was very self-conscious about her big glasses,” Candace said. “I didn’t hear any bad things about him. He was pretty well respected.”

Two of his neighbors also remembered Dr. Wick as having a knack for gardening and sharing it with them, as he did when he planted some tomato seeds around their mailbox one year.

“He had some tomato seeds, and he just kind of spread them around their mailbox in their front yard,” Candace said. “The next year the tomatoes came up, and the sisters were saying, ‘These are the most delicious tomatoes.’ They never knew it was him who planted it.”

In 1963, shortly after he earned his medical degree from Temple, he was dispatched to the small Japanese island of Chichijima during a two-year tour of duty with the U.S. Navy. At the time, the Navy still occupied the island in the years after World War II.

“He came to D.C., and one of the officers said, ‘Well, there’s a vacancy here,’” Candace said. “He ended up being on this little island. It was basically a little rock in the ocean, and he decided to go there.”

For two years, Wick was the only physician on the entire island.

“It was the best time of his life,” Candace said. “He met all kinds of characters there.”

Wick maintained his ophthalmology practice until his retirement in 1997. According to Candace, his retirement was brought on for health reasons.

“He had to retire a little bit early because he had a neuropathy developing,” Candace said. “So for health reasons, he had to retire.”

Retirement left him with more time to pursue his other passions: amateur piloting and ham radio. Through the massive antenna in his backyard, Wick was able to get in touch with fellow ham radio enthusiasts across the world.

“We had a big ham radio tower in his yard, which would allow him to talk to someone pretty far away,” Candace said. “I just remember being a kid and hearing him talk to people in Africa or somewhere in the Caribbean.”

Wick will be buried with military honors Thursday, Dec. 19, at West Sunbury Union Cemetery.