Nicholas "Nick" Rehwaldt

Nicholas Lloyd Rehwaldt, known to friends and family as Nick, died on September 6, 2026, at the age of 37. His family described him in the obituary they wrote as a political junkie with a sharp wit, a description that captured a restless, searching mind that moved through journalism, grant writing, comedy and activism over a short but unusually varied working life.

Born July 5, 1989, in Chicago, Rehwaldt grew up and went to high school in Evanston, Illinois, graduating from Evanston Township High School. He later earned an associate of arts degree from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of North Carolina Asheville. While in college he performed as a stand-up comic, building material around political issues and current headlines rather than conventional club fare.

His career afterward kept returning to politics and public affairs. He worked as a journalist covering Venezuela and other countries, writing for outlets including Mint Press News, where his byline appeared on reporting about Venezuelan politics and international affairs. He later served as a grant writer for two neighborhood organizations on Milwaukee's central city. Under the pseudonym Billy Pilgrim he wrote essays on national and global politics and contemporary culture, and he self-published two books. Those who knew him described someone who followed world events obsessively, often listening to foreign news broadcasts around the clock, and who could speak with equal fluency about Venezuelan coup attempts and the plot of whatever book he had most recently finished.

Outside his writing, Rehwaldt held a long list of jobs in food service and hospitality, among them line cook, prep cook, produce clerk, liquor shift lead and cashier, and he was a member of a juggling group and a political discussion meetup. He volunteered with the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the Kitty City animal rescue and the Kurdish Community Center, and he loved to travel, visiting cities across the United States and Canada and vacationing in countries including Italy, Japan, England, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Spain, Scotland and Ireland. His family's obituary also disclosed that he lived with schizoaffective disorder throughout his adult life, a condition they said never diminished the intellectual brilliance and sharp humor for which he was remembered.

No cause of death has been made public. His family announced the death through an obituary published by a Chicago funeral home and picked up by the Evanston RoundTable and Legacy.com, and tributes since then have focused on his curiosity, his generosity toward neighbors and people experiencing homelessness, and the distinct, sometimes brutal wit that those close to him said masked a sensitive and caring nature.