When Corey Utz remembers his father, who died Tuesday, April 16, he describes a life punctuated by little moments.

J. Robert Utz, of Mars, who was a middle school math teacher in the Pine-Richland School District and a Mars Area School District basketball coach, “just did the normal,” his son said. He said family VHS tapes are full of videos of Utz with his children, whether he was sledding or building snowmen in the yard. He helped build Pinewood Derby cars for Cub Scouts, and liked throwing a football in the yard.

Robert Utz was 70 when he died in the Intensive Care Unit of a blood infection following a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Robert Utz enjoyed mowing the grass, his son said, and never made a fuss if the lines weren’t perfect or if children tore up the yard with a bonfire. At sports games, Corey Utz said he would look up in the crowd to see his father watching with a lollipop in his mouth so he wouldn’t yell at referees.

In every memory, Corey Utz said, his father is somewhere present.

“He was just always there,” he said.

“There was nothing spectacular — he didn’t hold any records, he was an average golfer, he wasn’t a priest or a preacher, though he always talked about the gospel,” Corey Utz said. “He wasn’t a professional water skier, but every day in the summer he was on the water. He bowled.”

“He just did what he was asked, over and over and over, just like any other good man,” he said. “It’s a life that was really well lived.”

As Corey Utz spoke about his father Thursday, he noted he was at his parents’ home with his brothers, brother-in-law and childhood friends cleaning. Since his father’s death, Corey Utz said he has been receiving texts and messages from people he hasn’t spoken to in over 20 years who shared stories about his father.

“He left an impression,” Corey Utz said. “He wasn’t flippant. When he was with you, he gave you everything he had.”

“I think as you get older, you look at people who have been a part of your life, and there’s a handful that stand out as the ones you truly respect,” said Kent Shoemaker, former Mars basketball coach and middle school math teacher. “Utz falls in that category.”

Shoemaker knew Utz for 25 years, having taught and coached his children in the Mars Area School District. Even before he met Utz, he said he knew of him as one of the prominent past athletes in the school district.

Shoemaker said he was always impressed by the way Utz would check in on people regardless of how busy he was.

“Bob would always seek you out if you were at an event, or wherever,” Shoemaker said. “He’d seek you out, ask how you are. He had a genuine concern for others.”

“No matter what it was — it could be in sports, maybe you had a bad game, or a good game — whenever you finished talking with him, you always felt better,” he said.

As a young man, Robert Utz “kept on living” despite tragedy, his son said. His fiancée died of cancer when he was 22.

Later, while working in personal finance, he met his wife, Connie, fell in love and got married.

In the late ’90s, Robert Utz’s career pivoted from personal finance to education, when he went back to school at Robert Morris University to become a teacher. He did so while undergoing treatment for melanoma, his son said.

“He lost a lot of lymph nodes,” Corey Utz said. “He battled and battled and battled. He said if he was going to have a limited lifetime, he would devote the rest of his life back to us kids and the community.”

After his battle with melanoma, Robert Utz became a math teacher in the Pine-Richland School District.

He also coached high school and junior high basketball at Mars and Pine-Richland and developed a youth basketball program in Mars.

Through his life, Robert Utz also modeled a close relationship with family, his son said, devoting himself to his wife and children.

When Robert Utz’s cousin died, he took in his niece and nephew, who grew up with the family through the rest of their childhood.

“I still have that — we’re a close-knit group,” Corey Utz said about his family. “Time, distance doesn’t matter to us. We’ll find our way back to each other.”

Corey Utz said his father’s appreciation of the mundane can be traced back to his grandfather.

Robert Utz grew up helping on his grandfather’s farm in Mars, spending the summers there and picking up hay in the fall, his son said.

One of the lessons Corey Utz remembers his father teaching him can be captured in his favorite quote.

“At the end of the day, it will always boil down to God and consistent hard work,” Corey Utz said, recalling the phrase. “I don’t know the allocation for the particular success you’re viewing, but I do know there exists no substitute for those two ingredients.”

“That was my dad,” he said. “He knew that with the blessings he had, some of it came from diligence, work ethic and the ability to keep doing the normal. Some of it was just God’s grace and goodness.”

About five weeks ago, Corey Utz said his father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He completed two rounds of chemotherapy. Easter Sunday, he was throwing a football with his grandchildren. Then he contracted a blood infection.

In the ICU, Corey Utz said he watched nurses and doctors embody the characteristics he saw in his father.

“It was just people doing the normal,” he said. “They did every possible thing they could, just doing their normal.”

“They were remarkable in the hospital,” Corey Utz said. “The hospital cared for him better than you could possibly expect because they just did what they were supposed to do — they just did the normal.”

His father died in the ICU surrounded by family and listening to worship music. Corey Utz described his father’s death as “remarkably peaceful.”

“He was a good human being in Western PA, a Butler County kid,” Corey Utz said. “He grew up, got taught a lot of lessons and never departed from them.”