Fred

[Will Owen <nashwill912@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Never got to meet him, wouldn't recognize a picture of him, never even
read or heard a description of him, but if I'd run into him at a Club
function I'll bet I'd have known immediately who this was. People who
are in the habit of speaking the truth as best they can have voices that
convey their personalities clearly, unshaded by bluff, bluster or
evasion of any sort. I never heard his voice, but I'd recognize it anywhere.

Fred snapped at me twice, I think. I snapped back once because he was
speaking from prejudice, and he admitted it and apologized; the other
time it was one of his famous "if you don't know what you're doing,
DON'T DO IT!" lectures, and I certainly had it coming. He then offered
to guide me through the proper procedures step by step. He was a real
teacher, one of the best any of us has ever had.

The one thing his postings to us never betrayed was his own pain and
suffering. From some who knew him and his wife well, I learned a lot
about those things, and about his increasingly frail physical condition.
This, even as he was trying to find a turbocharger to get yet more
horsepower out of his gyrocopter engine!

The most indomitable human soul still inhabits a mortal body, as we
learn over and over and over in spite of our persistent if insane hope
to believe otherwise. May we never give up that hope, and may such
fearless people as Fred continue to inspire it. Buon viaggio, Federico.

Will
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