The Region : His Last Request: Car Parts Catalogue

A Texas man dying of cancer had one last request before he died: He wanted to read a $6 Jaguar parts catalogue from a San Luis Obispo firm. “I assume he was some kind of car buff,” said Donna Kubasak, bookkeeper at XK’s Unlimited, a mail-order firm. “They really get kind of fanatic sometimes,” she said. The catalogue was all a 42-year-old man from Austin really wanted. He ordered it from the mail order firm, but a backlog at the printer delayed the mailing, Kubasak said. She received a call from the man’s wife, who asked that the company send her a catalogue immediately. Kubasak withheld the names of the couple to keep their identities private. “I told her I’d be glad to send one free of charge for the delay,” Kubasak said. She figured she would never hear from the woman again, but she received a thank you letter from the man’s wife. “It arrived the day before he died,” the wife wrote. “It brought a smile to his face.”