George ‘Zack’ Zajicek, MADD supporter

Zack Zajicek was working the night shift at the Roadway Express trucking company when the call came. His 20-year-old son, Jamie, the kid he’d coached from T-ball to football, had been killed by a drunken driver.

The family was devastated. But within a year, Mr. Zajicek turned his grief into action. He joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving and soon had truckers sporting MADD’s red ribbons on their antennas across the country.

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Cynthia C. Hagain, MADD

George ‘Zack’ Zajicek (on the right, holding poster) at a 2003 memorial roadblock for his son Jamie in Henry County.

George “Zack” Zajicek, 61, died of cancer at his home in Stockbridge on Wednesday. His funeral is at 4 p.m. on Sunday at Lighthouse Community Baptist Church. Haisten Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

Mr. Zajicek was raised in Chicago. A Vietnam veteran, he was stationed at Atlanta’s Fort McPherson Army base in 1968 when he saw two girls drive by one day in a blue 1958 Chevy.

The driver, the very shy Beckie Bray, had just left graduation practice at Therrell High School. She was riding through the base on a dare from her friend.

He hollered out to them. They stopped to talk. He said he’d fix her broken radio if she came back.

“He was just terribly nice,” Mrs. Zajicek said. “I told my girlfriend that day that I was going to marry him.”

And that she did, just six months later.

Mr. Zajicek never fixed that radio, but he repaired many other things over the years. A graduate of DeKalb Community College’s Industrial Electricity program, he tinkered with everything from TVs to computers.

The year before Jamie died, the Zajiceks finally got the daughter they’d always wanted. They had the option of adopting twins who had made A’s in school, Mrs. Zajicek said, but fell for Tina, who is mentally handicapped. They would spend many hours together in Special Olympics activities.

In 2003, the Henry County police conducted a roadblock in front of the Atlanta Motor Speedway dedicated to the memory of Jamie.

Mr. Zajicek, a jokester who loved to greet people at church, enjoyed watching trains roll by on the tabletop village he built in his garage.

Shirley Jackson enjoyed sitting there with him. She is one of two ex-wives of the Zajicek’s other son, Barry.

Mrs. Jackson, of Buford, said her former father-in-law teared up when she asked him to give her away to her second husband, John. And she was the last person he ever talked to, Mrs. Zajicek said.

“She told him she would take care of me,” Mrs. Zajicek said. “After she told him that, he took two breaths and he was gone.”

Other survivors include sisters Barbara Henry of Chicago, Noreen Molinari of Port St. Lucie, Fla., Lisa Stogner of Frankfort, Ill., and Cecille Murray and Gloria Zajicek of South Holland, Ill.; brothers Robert Zajicek and John Zajicek of Chicago and Kenneth Zajicek of McDonough; and four grandchildren.