For Lew on His Birthday

Today is special to millions, what with Passover and Good Friday but to me it's mostly just April 2^nd, the birthday of our old friend Lew, who in perfect health one night in his 41st year sat up in the bed and died. He and his wife Jacquie were among the first friends we made in this town. Scarcely knowing us at all, they had us to dinner and our four little children felt so instantly comfortable they were three rooms away before we’d even sat down to the cheese and crackers.Lew was a genius - everyone said so - an MIT guy and one of the key people NASA contacted when the Shuttle shedding tiles like baby-teeth. He was a born teacher too, and could explain anything to you, even if you forgot to take Physics in high school; even if you thought you were dumb in Math. If Lew understood it – and Lew understood everything – he'd find six, or seven, or nineteen ways to make sure you could understand it too.He and Jacquie moved to Chicago not very long after the birth of their child Will, now a young father himself and a veteran of  the Iraq war. When the awful news of  Lew's death came, seven or eight of us dropped everything and flew out there, and someday, if his family doesn’t mind, I’d like to tell what I remember about the days they devoted to memorializing his life. It’s a story I still can't tell without weeping afresh for the pathos that’s in it.He traveled a fair amount, toting that amazing mind around to anywhere it was needed and he told me once he never drove home from the airport without fighting the urge to go faster and faster yet, fearful that something might have happened; fearful that his young family might have been taken somehow.In the end. of course he was the who was one taken and all the best minds in medicine could not say why.He was a good friend to us and we think of him still; and even now, when I drive to my own home after a time away, I too speed up as I grow closer, remembering his fond eagerness to see his dear ones. I speed up and then, when I see my house, I circle it entirely and look in every window. I do this every time, and  offer thanks to God and to Lew for helping me know what’s important.

From 37 years ago I just found this likeness of him  on the internet