My brother Richard aka here as Swerd, passed away yesterday after fifteen months with an aggressive lung cancer. He died peacefully with his family at his side and avoided much of the dreadful death that cancer can cause. He was 76.
Rich grew up in suburban Washington DC, our father was career civil service. 13 years older than me, he went to the university of North Carolina the same month I started kindergarten. After majoring in zoology, he spent 5 years in the navy (to avoid being drafted by the army and going to Vietnam) engaged in antisubmarine warfare during the cold war. He was stationed in Italy and Alaska.
He came back to Maryland and spent a year with the folks when I was in ninth grade and taught me many things like how to shave, but especially about music and stereos. After that he went to the Univ. of Connecticut and got a PhD in microbiology. While in CT he met his wife Bonnie, their first date was a Grateful Dead concert! Fun fact: when he was in Italy, and bored he wrote away to join the Grateful Dead fan club (Dead Freaks Unite! From their old albums). They replied that they never had anyone from Italy join before so he was made president of the Italian dead heads with the rights to sell Dead merchandise there. He never did that though.
After getting his degree, he came back to Maryland for a post doc at NIH and worked in some biotech firms around the area. Eventually he wound up at CTEP, a company that works with the National Cancer institute coordinating multicenter drug trials for cancer drugs. He retired about 8 ago. He has his wife Bonnie, two kids, one of whom helps design concert halls and other acoustic related architecture.
Rich was my best friend and best man at wedding number one (he had a Dead T shirt under his tux).
Of course, he was a regular contributor here at AH. He didn’t suffer fools well but was a master of the subtle put down. His thread on rehabilitating his JBL speakers,
https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/the-vintage-jbl-west-coast-sound-becomes-the….25014/
Is still IMO the best thread ever on this site. A few of you have written to me about him, sorry I haven’t been on much lately and didn’t see them, but thank you for your concern.
