On 11/21/20 17:37, Rosy Wolfe via 44Net wrote:
Thank you, Phil. I'm so grateful to be here and to help realize Brian's vision.
Thanks also for sharing that memory. The thanks is shared with everyone who is sharing memories of Brian tonight. I never got to meet him, so they help to paint a picture in my mind of the kind of man he was - unique, smart, wise, and keen to help people learn.
Well, let's not canonize him TOO much. Brian could also be quite the curmudgeon. While he was more than happy to help anyone at any knowledge level to fix a problem or to learn, he was *very* impatient with laziness or closed-minded stupidity and could rant about it at length. Being gay, he had absolutely no room for bigots -- who are not exactly unheard of among hams. He struggled with depression for much of his life, though he'd gotten that mostly under control. He'd retired from UCSD only a year or two earlier and his social life had really begun to take off when he suddenly passed.
I went to his UCSD retirement party. The title slide for Monty Python's "LIFE OF BRIAN" was on a screen, which was perfect. We gave him a gift certificate to Ham Radio Outlet. He seemed genuinely moved by the whole thing, an emotion I didn't see often. I kept thinking how he would have been utterly embarrassed by his memorial service. After all, Valerie and I had implicitly compared him to Alan Turing and Roger Revelle.
I'd seriously annoy him by interrupting him, a bad habit I picked up from my own largish family (you should hear our Zoom sessions). But Brian was one of my closest friends, and I still occasionally think about calling him up for dinner when I remember.
Phil