My Uncle Bill went on to explore new spaces yesterday. Always curious, always learning, he has gone ahead to find out what there is to know about the next place. He was born in 1917 in Queens, to Hungarian immigrant parents, and went on to become a noted physicist. He worked as a scientist with the U.S. Embassy in London, and during World War II in the Office of the Secretary of Defense working on antisubmarine operations. Eventually he moved to Ann Arbor as a research scientist and a professor at the University of Michigan, focusing on the health habits of people. He spent thirty years at the University, retiring as an Emeritus Professor of Health Systems.

That’s the short official version of his life; my version is different. I haven’t always known all the important work he did, I just knew him as Uncle Bill, the man who knew something about everything. The one that took our family’s already eclectic dinner conversations in even more diverse directions. Topics I didn’t know anything about as a kid were discussed. Physics, biology, earth sciences, chemistry, the stock market, corporations, research, just about anything could come up and be debated over dinner. He was like a window on a world I didn’t know existed. As I grew older I also grew to appreciate his intelligence and his opinions. I knew he was different, and that he had had different experiences, but I didn’t really know to what extent until I listened to him talk at his 90th birthday party about his work during World War II. It made me curious to learn more, but I didn’t take the opportunity to talk in depth with him, and that is something I will always regret.

Mostly I will remember him as a sweet man with an infectious smile who was always interested in what I was doing, what all of us were doing. I remember a man always curious about the next new thing, but one who lived comfortably without the latest gadgets. He was a man who read much, listened well, was thoughtful and humble, who completed crossword puzzles and every Wall Street Journal. He was a man who reconciled the past with the future, who used history and science to make the best of today, and who saw the future in his children and grandchildren. He was a man who really wasn’t ready to leave us, but when faced with the reality settled in with grace, lived in the moment and died peacefully in the home he loved with the wife he had loved for the past forty-five years by his side.

If I can live to be 90, be as active and vital as he, and die with the peace and grace he did, well, then I’d be content. You can’t do it any better than that. I’m going to miss you Uncle Bill. Thanks for being the good example that you were. Thanks for the quick smile of greeting I always got from you, the quiet moments of conversation, and the genuine interest you always expressed. I guess, thanks just for being you. Don’t forget us down here, we sure aren’t going to forget you.

I hope they have Wall Street Journals in heaven. I know they must.