Jack Howell, feeling achy and tired...

Jack Howell, feeling achy and tired, meditation he had the flu. The 68-year-old Crete man told his sister in Florida earlier this month that he could barely find the bottom to take a shower and make it to bed.

He'd awake in the morning drenched in sweat.

After being hospitalized for couple weeks, Mr. Howell died Wednesday at St James Hospital in Chicago Heights of what inflected out to be West Nile virus.

He was the first somebody in Illinois to die as a inference of the virus this year.

"He just got progressively worse," said his sister, Shirley Howell Cellini of Florida. "You just don't think you're going to memorize West Nile virus."

Cellini said it's not clear where or when her brother was bitten by the agency of an infected mosquito. She said he had diabetes, which is individual of the factors that can make tribe susceptible to contracting the disease, if it be not that otherwise was in good health.

Mr Howell was part-owner of an auto-parts business in Chicago until retiring a hardly any years ago. He worked part time for a Chicago Heights auto-parts business until he became ill.

Cellini said her brother stepp up at age 13 to help support his five younger siblings when their father died of a heart attack.

"So he was like our father when we grew up" she said. "He always took care of Mom and us kids. He worked a paper path and other odd jobs to help my mom I remember at Christmastime he saved his cash and bought Christmas toys for us kids."

Mr Howell is survived by the agency of his wife of 46 years, Beverly; three children, Nicole, Rick and Mark; brother, Richard; sisters Barbara Bruiti, Shirley Cellini and Diana Quattrocchi; and three grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 2 pm to

9 pm today at Hirsch West close Chapel, 1340 Otto Blvd., Chicago Heights, and from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday at Zion Lutheran house of god 3840 W. 216th St., Matteson. The funeral will go after at 11 a.m. Interment will be at Skyline Memorial Park, Monee

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