Rich
was an exceptional human being. He was
dedicated to doing the best possible job, but never lost sight of the people
behind the work. He strove to be the
kind of manager everyone dreams of—inspiring, funny, enthusiastic,
compassionate and generous—able to turn long hours and a stressful workplace
into an enjoyable experience, and considered it his responsibility to enhance
the career growth and development of everyone on his staff, from clerks and
secretaries whom he helped train to move to more challenging positions, to
programmers and systems engineers. He
was intelligent, widely read in philosophy, history, science and technology,
but loved movies and music and pop culture. He was a musician and composer, and
had a glorious voice which he most recently used in singing bed-time lullabies
to his 22 month old son, and in reading him Harry Potter books aloud (with
appropriate English accents and Scottish brogues), was a superb athlete—at 6’4”
and 245 lbs, an ex high school football star and Yale (’91) defensive
lineman. Most of all, he loved and cherished
his family. He and Karen had just moved
into a new house, and Rich was enthusiastically building wooden toy chests and
book cases for their son Zachary’s playroom.
He had even cut back his legendarily long hours a bit, arriving at his
office at around 5:30 (after having risen at 3am and checking in with the
London office) and coming home by 5 or 5:30 to be able to spend more time with
his family. Even when he was away
during his long hours at work, he would e-mail and phone 6 or more times a day,
and send funny little electronic greeting cards in Zachy’s name to Karen for
her to let Zach play with. The walls of
his office were papered with hundreds of photos of Zachary, which Rich would
caption with his unique brand of humor, and he lovingly created CD’s containing
photos and home movies documenting his son’s growth, which he would proudly
send to all his friends and colleagues.
He will be sorely missed by everyone who ever had the honor to know him
and especially those of us who loved him dearly.