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Peter John blows bubbles at Peninsula Park. His wife said he blew bubbles in public settings to see how people reacted, but mostly to capture the joy of the experience.

(Ed Devereaux of Sabot Images)

They blew bubbles, played his favorite songs by George Harrison and told stories about Peter John, a man with a Ph.D. in history who loved teaching but became misunderstood in recent years as he coped with bipolar disorder.

John was stabbed to death March 4 just as he was getting ready to move out of his longtime North Portland home to a more spacious property in Washington with a view of the Columbia River. There, he hoped to play music as loud as he wanted and commune with nature in peace.

"Peter was taken from us in an act of cowardice and darkness,'' family friend Corlene Ankrum said at a recent memorial service to remember John.

John, 56, had allowed Stephen Kovacs, 51, to stay at his home on North Haight Avenue the past two months after Kovacs had lost his job and struggled with alcohol abuse.

Kovacs worked for EFI Recycling Co. and was the employee who had found an abandoned newborn girl dead on the company's commercial sort line last May. He ultimately lost his job at the recycling company and suffered anxiety attacks, friends said.

"Peter was trying to help him,'' said John's wife, Linda Strauss. "He would take in everybody and find the good in them.''

John had just bought a two-acre property in Kalama and told Kovacs that he had to move out of the North Portland house.

The night before the stabbing, John had given Kovacs an ultimatum: 'If you're not up and out of here by 6 a.m., I'm calling police,'" according to mutual friend John Anthony Garcia, known in the neighborhood as "Chinook.'' Garcia also had spent the night at John's home and witnessed the stabbing.

On the Tuesday he died, John was drinking his usual cup of tea, strumming a classical Spanish song on his guitar and composing a new song as he watched a bird wading in the birdbath outside his home. At one point, he went inside and lay on the couch, working on chords for the song, Garcia said.

Garcia remained on the porch with Kovacs and said he offered to help Kovacs get his food stamps and go to detox. "I said, 'Hey Steve, let's get your sleeping bag and at least get it on the porch, so it looks like we're doing something,' '' Garcia recalled.

They both walked inside the home. Garcia said he saw Kovacs walk behind the couch and reach his hand over to John.

"I think they're going to shake,'' Garcia said, "and the next thing he does is stab Peter.''

John didn't scream, but just sat up, and Garcia spotted blood. Garcia said he was worried Kovacs was going to stab him next. He threw the fireplace screen at Kovacs, and ran out the house, yelling for a neighbor to call 911.

Stephen Kovacs

A neighbor and a police officer tried to resuscitate John, but he died in his home. Kovacs was arrested about a block away, accused of stabbing John with a military-style knife once in the chest. Kovacs last week pleaded not guilty to a two-count indictment charging him with murder and unlawful use of a weapon.

"Peter was looking forward to a new start in life – to be grounded in the earth, having a peaceful sanctuary, designing gardens, a pond, a waterfall,'' his wife said.

John was born in London and moved to California with his parents and older brother when he was young. He first crossed paths with Strauss in 1983, when she was invited as a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego to lecture on Darwin in a 19th Century Intellectual History class, where John was a student.

Their relationship blossomed years later when they were teaching assistants at the university, their offices side by side. His wife talked of John's reverence for his students and love of teaching. He went on to teach at the university and later at the Lower Columbia College in Longview, Wash., Linfield College and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland.

He taught his wife about music and philosophy, and she taught him about science.

"We have had the most wonderful private university for the last 30 years,'' Strauss said.

She had moved out of their North Portland home about a year ago because her husband's bipolar disorder made him very unpredictable, she said.

"The only way for us to stay together was to live apart,'' she said.

He liked to keep his doors and windows wide open as he played his music – sometimes to the annoyance of his neighbors. When they'd tell him to lower the volume, he'd yell obscenities at them, some neighbors said. He fed the birds and rats – he made no distinctions, his wife said.

A group of neighborhood residents who played tennis with John at Irving Park remembered how he'd ride his bike through the park and blow bubbles. Their tennis games were relaxed, with lots of conversation and laughs in between serves.

According to his wife, John blew bubbles in public to study the cultural differences in how people responded. Some viewed him suspiciously. Others were delighted and entranced.

"He was all about trying to find ways of lifting people out of their mundane, oppressive concerns, and lift them toward wonder,'' Strauss said.

During the memorial, some in attendance started blowing their own bubbles from colorful containers assembled at the front of the room as Harrison's "Give Me Love'' filled the air. John's longtime companion Boo, a pitbull mix, sat beside John's family and friends.

"I feel that Peter has been released,'' his wife said.

-- Maxine Bernstein