PUBLISHER’S NOTE: THE BEST FRIEND
On May 1, 2025, our community lost one of the most amazing people I have had the pleasure to know: Zach Hovinga. Always in demand, never lacking a smile.
If you travelled between DTK and Uptown Waterloo, you saw Zach making his way to Princess Cafe for an iced coffee before his shift at Jane Bond.
As a bartender, what Zach served up went far beyond food and drink. Sometimes you’d get the inside scoop on a new business or one that was quietly closing down. You might get some life advice or you might get a munchwrap supreme.
If you had good fortune, Zach would get the early cut and ask you what the next move was. The adventures that would follow could only be described as a who-is-who and a what is what of KW’s nightlife. Traversing our community with him was always a fever dream. He made connecting with people seem effortless and casual.
In your lifetime, if you are lucky, you will meet a few people like Zach. He was congenial with everybody he met. I will eagerly tell people that Zach is my best friend, knowing damn well I am on a long list of people who count Zach as their best friend.
But there was no competition for Zach’s adulation. He held no one person above the next and showed everyone the care you’d expect from a best friend. He was compassionate, with an effortless ability to express empathy even when wrapped up in his own thoughts.
He would treat even the most disorderly patrons with a careful dignity that was both authoritative and reassuring. He was always in control.
But whatever he was to me, and to you, he was so much more to everyone around him and it’s humbling to imagine the impact one person can have.
On May 8, Zach’s family received over 600 relatives and friends at the Henry Walser Funeral Home on Frederick St. The staff at Henry Walser did an excellent job facilitating overflow parking and coordinating such a large group of people, but it was clear that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
There were lines extending outside into the completely packed parking lot. After waiting outside for about 45 minutes, you could easily expect to wait another hour and a half inside before getting the chance to chat with his family.
The sheer scale of everything, the level of connection that Zach shared with everyone in the building, all of it was as overwhelming as it was life-affirming. Even from the afterlife, he continues to bring people together.
I was priveleged to share many intimate conversations with Zach while he was in the hospital and his self-awareness will always strike me. After effectively teasing out all of my own dramatic grievances, he began to share how his perspective had changed since his diagnosis. He talked about the guilt he felt as a bartender for enabling people with potentially desctructive habits. He called it his own “crisis of accountability.”
All I could think to tell him was my own truth: that he was the only reason I went to any bar, even through my various bouts with sobriety. I would go just to see him and say hello, the booze being not more than a footnote.
Zach was just the kind of guy that always made people feel welcome.
He was far beyond the best bartender: he was the best friend.
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