My cousin just called to let me know her father, my Uncle Kip, had died. He was the last of my mother’s siblings.

Growing up, Kip was an ever-present presence at our house. Very early on, he was still living there, and after he got married, he was still pretty close by, and eventually moved into a house right around the corner. His schedule was flexible enough, and he was close enough that he could often stop by to visit Mum.

Kip liked to hold court, so to speak. He had a deep booming voice, and he was a raconteur. The only thing was, he… tended… to… speak… very….slowly… and had a good sense of irony, so his stories tended to be involved and take… a… long… time… to… get… to… the… point.

He also loved to sing, and sang, well…decently. At Christmas Eve, my mother would hold a family party, and if someone was there to play it, eventually you would find Kip hanging by the piano singing along.

Kip grew up with two sisters, and my Dad became the brother he never had, and when Dad died, he made a point of telling me so. He was devoted to his wife Joanna, and they had over 60 years together.

His son-in-law was telling me this past Saturday that Kip was like a “burnt marshmallow” — crusty on the outside, and a softie on the inside. For example, he didn’t much care for his daughter’s cat, and wasn’t too upset when it disappeared on the Cape, but when he got a call that it had been found, he immediately made the two hour trip to the Cape to pick up his little girl’s pet.

Several of my O’Hara uncles liked to tease, and as an introverted and awkward child, I was an easy target. I really didn’t like it, and tried to avoid them when I could. Kip, on the other hand, never had a mean streak in him. While he certainly had a good sense of humor, I don’t recall him ever teasing or making fun of me. He laughed with you, not at you. He was my favorite uncle (with Tom a very close second).

While he was a lifelong and staunch Republican, I can’t recall him ever manifesting the kind of nastiness so in vogue with the current Republican party. And he was active in local government. He helped out at the polls, and served on the Canton Finance Committee for several years.

Kip wore his heart on his sleeve, especially as he got older (something I find myself doing more of myself). My sister asked him to officiate at her wedding, which touched him greatly. He was so touched in fact, that he kept welling up as he was officiating, and my sister’s friend, who was acting a minister, had to put her hand on his shoulder to steady him.

Kip and Joanna shared a lot of our family vacations with us. The two families would overlap weeks at the Cape to give each family more time. Eventually they decided to move there full time. Kip and Joanna both loved the Cape, and Kip ended up becoming an early morning regular at the Hole-In-One coffee shop.

I don’t have many one-on-one memories of him–we interacted mostly at large get-togethers or when he would drop in to see Mum– but we did go in to see the Big Dig together. Several months before the tunnel opened, they allowed walking tours to go in and see it. Kip came by a week or so before, and I mentioned the upcoming tour to him, and asked if he’d be interested. So we went in, and I think he enjoyed himself.

As time went on, we saw less of them, since they were now on the Cape and we were still in the Boston area. Still, it was good to see them, whenever I could, and I made a point of swinging by their house when I was on the Cape.

The past few years have not been great ones for Kip — both he and Joanna developed health problems that I don’t need to get into, but he had a long, active life, filled with friends, family and his beloved Joanna.