John Quade died yesterday. I wouldn’t have known the name if it wasn’t for The Professor. When he was trying to make it seem like he had a thriving production company, he opened up an office in Temecula. To launch the place, he invited a bunch of people. It’s too long of a story to explain some of the people there, but someone in the crowd knew someone who knew John Quade and invited him to come.

I knew the name vaguely and it wasn’t until he showed up did I recognize the face. He had the perfect face for being a character actor, because once you saw him, you didn’t forget him. He was in a bunch of movies but I remembered him from some 70s or early 80s TV show. I think it was The A-Team where he had an episode as a bad guy, but that was his unique charm. It was one episode and the face stuck with me for over 20 years.

I talked to Mr. Quade for about an hour. He was a pretty interesting guy. He was the type of actor you want to have, similar to another actor I kind of admire, Jerry Doyle from Babylon 5. Both actors had careers before they became actors. Mr. Quade was an aerospace engineer. Yeah, the guy with the gangster face was a certified rocket scientist. We talked about his acting career for maybe ten minutes but the rest of the time we talked about space travel, structural design and other tech stuff. He was really fascinated by the CGI work I did and how I got the computer to design ships and blow them up.

He was a cool guy and even though I saw him one time, it meant a lot to talk to him.