Robert Hanzlik Obituary

Robert Paul (Bob) Hanzlik, 81, died peacefully on Friday, March 28, 2025, from respiratory complications of ALS. Born in Chicago on November 4, 1943, he was the only child of Mary Catherine (Kitz) Hanzlik and Milton Charles Hanzlik. He grew up in the industrial neighborhood where his father and uncles, like their fathers before them, walked to work daily. From the age of five and every summer through high school, his parents took him to spend a few weeks with relatives on farms near Naylor in southeast Missouri. There he discovered cows, chickens, pigs, mules, snakes, turtles, fish, frogs, ticks and chiggers. These experiences had a profound influence on the rest of his life.

Bob attended Cyrus McCormick Elementary School. In 5th grade he started taking clarinet lessons, and he joined the Lawndale Chicago Boys Club where he continued clarinet lessons, engaged in outdoor nature activities and started learning photography. Once enrolled in Harrison Technical High School he took shop courses (foundry, machine shop), college prep courses, marching and concert band, ROTC, and more Boys Club activities with nature and photography. In his first semester of high school he met an attractive brown-eyed brunette named Lois Lang, not realizing then that he would eventually marry her.

For college Bob chose Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (far from Chicago, close to southeast Missouri, but with in-state tuition), where he majored in zoology, minored in chemistry, and worked in the field and the lab for the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory (CWRL). He also played clarinet in the Marching Salukis band. After two years and the summer in between he returned to Chicago for a summer job at Motorola. He also began dating his former HS classmate Lois. Returning to SIU in the fall he rejoined the CWRL and the Marching Salukis and began changing his major to chemistry while Lois went to UIUC. Absence made the heart grow fonder. He and Lois were married in Chicago on June 18, 1965, and spent their last year of college together at SIU.

During that final year Bob scored well on the Graduate Record Exam and won a prestigious NSF Graduate Fellowship, so in August 1966, after he and Lois graduated from SIU, it was off to grad school at Stanford, a brand-new part of the world for them. It was a mind­ opening experience. Bob was introduced to backpacking and noon-time running. His research on cholesterol biosynthesis went well, earning him a PhD in Organic Chemistry and an NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship to study inorganic chemistry at Cambridge University (1970-71). While he and Lois were in Cambridge, The University of Kansas called to offer a faculty position in Medicinal Chemistry. It was a perfect match for Bob's interests in chemistry and biology, so he jumped at the chance.

At Kansas Bob loved teaching pharmacy undergraduates, doing research related to drug metabolism with grad students and postdocs (more than 50 overall), and contributing to the scientific literature (one book and over 170 research articles). During his 49 years as a faculty member Bob was highly active. His motto, learned at SIU, was work hard, play hard, in that order. Hence his daily noon-time running with the KU Mad Dogs and his avid windsurfing and backpacking, in addition to holding office in several professional societies (ACS, RSC, AAAS, SOT, ISSX). He directed an NIH pre-doctoral training grant (1994-2000}, an NIH Center on Protein Structure and Function (2002-2018), and served as Interim Chair of his department from 2017 until he retired in May 2020. Retirement went well but in 2022 he started to decline and in 2023 he was diagnosed with ALS.

He was preceded in death by his parents, uncles (Edward Kitz and William Hanzlik), and his dear cousin Gloria (Kitz) Burns.

He is survived by his loving wife of nearly 60 years, Lois, her sister Marilyn J. Lang, her brother Daniel G. Lang, and their families.

Private inurnment will take place at Pioneer Cemetery on the KU campus at a later date. To leave a message for Bob's family, please visit www.Rumsey-Yost.com.