Their Life and Memory is a Gift

Greetings.  A few nights ago I attended a memorial service for the father of a close friend.  He died earlier in the week in Florida, was buried in New Jersey, and here in Washington, D.C., friends gathered at his daughter's home to comfort her and honor his life.  Most of us had never met him, as is often the case with friends we develop later in life in our highly-mobile society.  Yet his story, told fondly, was a gift to those in attendance.  

Herbert Forman grew up in New York City and attended the city's finest public high school.  It was a choice that would one day prove invaluable for a most unusual reason.  From there he studied chemical engineering at City College and started working on the Manhattan project as part of the team developing the first atomic bomb.  He then began a long and distinguished career as an engineer specializing in filters–filters for vehicles, humans, and almost anything else that required one.  But on February 3, 1959, while returning from a business trip to Chicago his plane went down in the East River on approach to LaGuardia Airport. He would be one of only eight people out of 73 on board to survive the crash of American Airlines Flight 320.  Upon being rescued he graciously thanked the New York City Public Schools for having taught him how to swim.  (Some of you might remember that this was the exact same day as another plane crash in an Iowa field that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and became known in song as "The Day the Music Died.")

In addition to work, I learned that his greatest loves were family, friends, music–especially opera and Broadway shows, learning, reading, and his faith.  He also had a keen interest in language and the New York Times crossword puzzle, which he would routinely complete in ink in a matter of minutes.

Each and every one of us is special and worth knowing for so many reasons.  By virtue of our skills and interests, our passions and personalities, our work and what we accomplish, our innate "genius," the friends and families we hold dear, the journeys we take, and the events that shape us.  Hopefully these gifts are recognized by others while we are still alive and part of their lives.  Yet all too often most of us are merely faces in a crowd.

A man I never knew.  A story and a life I'm privileged to have discovered, even if I learned on the occasion of his passing.  May the life and memory of every Herb Forman be a gift to all of us and another part of the puzzle we must put together in reaching our full potential as people and organizations in the world we share.

Cheers!