About a year ago Gary David my very good friend died.  I wish that he were still here to argue with me about the presidential election and the state of baseball.  Both could use his wisdom.

I was honored to give one of the eulogies at his funeral you can read it here:

When Barbara spoke to me about saying a few words today she asked: “how do you tell about a whole life in a few minutes?  The answer is that you don’t, you can’t, but we honor Gary’s memory by trying.   I want to spend my few minutes remembering Gary’s intellect over his entire life.

During the last few years Gary had to suffer a lot of pain and it changed him, often for the worse.  We need to remember him for all that he was.  When he learned, after five years of intermittent but horrible pain, that he had terminal cancer he said to me: “life is uncertain, drink your good wine first.”  Gary had a very good collection of wine.  And he graciously shared the good ones.

To be complete we should stipulate that (stipulate is a lawyering term which means roughly; “agree without argument”) Gary was an excellent father and husband.  We can stipulate that in rush hour traffic he drove passively in the slow lane, that he was an enthusiastic skier, a natural scuba diver and that he was a loyal Democrat.

When Alexis was young he taught her that when he said “Ronald Reagan” she should reply “yucky, yucky, yucky”

Gary and I spent nearly 20 years talking.  We were neighbors and friends and for many years Gary was my companies lawyer.  He kept me out of jail.  Finally for 5 years we shared office space in Pasadena.  During all of that time we discussed everything.  Discussed is the polite way of saying that we argued.  We argued about baseball, politics, religion, farm policy, fighting wild fires, global warming and the right amount of kick to use when swimming laps in a small pool.

When Gary argued it was adversarial but without animosity.  He argued to discover facts and he used those facts to find the best available solutions.  He didn’t incriminate or personalize an argument and he never attacked the messenger.  He saw thing the way they were not the way he wanted them to be.
Gary tried to discover the truth and in doing that he enriched the lives of those around him, in business and in his community.

Gary’s intellectual honesty will be missed.  He died to soon.  As Laurence Gonzales wrote in his book Deep Survival: “perhaps we have to accept the fact that the light that burns the brightest, burns half as long.”