Growing up on the near North Side, he attended Clark School and Soldan-Blewett High School, graduating from the latter in 1949. He then attended Washington University, where he was a member of ROTC, a standout tight end on the football team and a staunch member of Theta Xi fraternity. He graduated in 1953 with a degree in industrial engineering.
In 1955 he married Margaret E. Nash, whom he had known since childhood and dated as a teenager. The couple lived for two years on Army bases in Maryland and Massachusetts while he fulfilled his service obligations, and returned to St. Louis in 1957.
Together they had two sons, Jean Pierre Dubail IV, born in 1956, and Bradley T. Dubail, born in 1959, and raised them both in the Carrollton subdivision in Bridgeton, Missouri. The Dubails were one of the founding families of John Calvin Presbyterian Church, and both served many years on the church’s Session and Board of Deacons. Jean III also was deeply involved in the community, coaching youth baseball and serving for many years as adult leader at all levels of Boy Scouting. He had a strong sense of duty, and almost never refused a request to help his neighbor with a small job or his community with a bigger one.
He worked for several large St. Louis-area firms over the years, including the Mallinckrodt Chemical, Wagner Electric, McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing corporations. He retired, reluctantly, at 62, but kept busy doing carpentry, plumbing and other jobs for many years afterward. He was a painstaking man, and whatever job he undertook he made sure to do it well.
He was a natural athlete, playing softball and basketball well into middle age and hitting the treadmill at the YMCA well into his 70s. He was competitive by nature, and although he never bragged or boasted or strutted, he would do his best to beat you whether the game was checkers or croquet.
Although he was born and raised in the city, he grew to enjoy the outdoors over the years. He took the family camping at Table Rock Lake and regularly floated the clear rivers of the Ozarks, quietly paddling a canoe while his friends fished. (He never missed the annual Mother’s Day float.) He also showed a taste for outdoor adventure, rafting the Grand Canyon and llama-trekking in the Sierras when other men his age were parked on their porches.
He was by nature reserved, and was never the type to push a point of view, dominate a conversation or raise his voice in argument. But he could surprise you sometimes with his sly wit, making you wonder whether more was going on in there than you suspected.
He was a loyal friend; the buddies he made when he was five years old were still his buddies eight decades later. And while not a demonstrative person, he was loving in a quiet way. He would get on the floor and play with his grandkids, even if he creaked a little getting back up.
It wasn’t easy for him to say, “I love you,” but when he said it, you knew he meant it.
He is survived by his sons, Jean IV (Carolyn) and Brad; two grandchildren, Diana Jack and Evan Dubail; a sister, Joann Whipple (Chip); nephews Paul Whipple (Libby) and Peter Whipple (Joani); niece Carol Lynes (Karl); several cousins; and his longtime friend, Jean Stemmler. His former wife, Margaret, preceded him in death.
