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Randall Wright
Born in Oak Park, Ill., a couple years after WWII.
Died in San Jose, CA, ten months after September 11th
Actor, waiter, brother, Eagle Scout, one-time clarinet player, talented painter, awful singer, New Yorker, student of Napoleon, chess player, good dancer, phenomenal letter writer, frontline relief volunteer at WTC, generous, smart, quiet, frightfully handsome, always broke, rich with friends. Died too soon. Somebody to remember.
Quite wealthy when it came to friends.
Hard to know beyond a certain point, like a mystery novel not finished written.
Loved words. Loved people. Loved by lots of very good people. And admired.
Lucky to have worked with the fine people at Charlie's in New York and a place in Time Square called Barrymore's though I don't think it's there anymore.
Loved Shastakovich and Simon and Garfunkle. No understanding at all about money. A scholar. Searching, hungry, quiet. Cared about strangers. Uncertain about lots of things. Made mistakes. Some big ones. Had a bigger heart and more friends than anybody I ever met. Believed in the power of fiction. Didn't believe in God. Lived three flights up in a place on Hoyt in Brooklyn.
In Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, the author attempts to describe his brother with this parable.
This is how I've always thought of my brother. Far beyond the ability to tell the sex or color of a beast.
Duke Mu of Chin said to Po Lo: "You are now advanced in years. Is there any member of your family whom I could employ to look for horses in your stead?" Po Lo replied: "A good horse can be picked out by its general build and appearance. But the superlative horse-one that raises no dust and leaves no tracks-is something evanescent and fleeting, elusive as thin air. The talents of my sons lie on a lower plane altogether; they can tell a good horse when they see one, but they cannot tell a superlative horse. I have a friend, however, one Chiu-fang Kao, a hawker of fuel and vegetables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior. Pray see him."
Duke Mu did so, and subsequently dispatched him on the quest for a steed. Three months later, he returned with the news that he had found one. "It is now in Shach'iu," he added. "What kind of a horse is it?" asked the Duke. "Oh, it is a dun-colored mare," was the reply. However, someone being sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. "That friend of yours," he said, "whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has made a fine mess of it. Why, he cannot even distinguish a beast's color or sex! What on earth can he know about horses?" Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisfaction. "Has he really got as far as that?" he cried. "Ah, then he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better that horses."
When the horse arrived, it turned out indeed to be a superlative animal.
Randy had one request about his memorial service, that Jeffra Cook would sing Desperado.
Donations to the Johns Hopkins study of Hereditary Pancreatic Cancer may be made in his name.
Johns Hopkins Hospital is conducting research in this area.
Ralph H. Hruban, M.D.
The Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pathology
Room 2242, The Weinberg Building
401 North Broadway
Baltimore, MD 21231-2410
(If you buy a stranger a drink, that too can be done in his name. He did that himself quite a few times. But if you tip generously, I think he'd like that even more.)
I can be reached via email at robt followed by wright followed by the at symbol followed by AOL, then dot com.