After welcoming and introductory comments by Ron's Cousin, James Gertmenian, George Harris comes to the podium to begin the series of eulogies for Ron

George Harris

I think I speak for all of us here when I say that this is not the way that I thought that we would be gathering to honor the life of our dear friend Ron Mardigian.

It is much easier for me to envision us all together for a wedding (hopefully his), a birthday party, a celebration of his accomplishments in education or a roast; sharing our stories and tales of adventures with Ronnie with one another: planning the next adventure or get together.

Like most of you, Ronnie has been an important part of my life for many years. We met more than twenty years ago on the beach at Crissy Field in San Francisco, both staring out at the water, trying to figure out whether there was enough wind in the middle of the Bay for us to sail, what size sails to rig and how to best rig them to get out to the wind.

In windsurfing you spend a lot of time sitting on the beach, watching the wind build, waiting for the tides to change and getting to know your fellow windsurfers. While watching and waiting, Ronnie and I became fast friends and soon extended our friendship to other parts of our lives. We partied together, traveled together, shared countless adventures and came to think of each other as brothers. I knew that I could depend on him, and he could depend on me.

I was raised with two older sisters and even though I have a large, extended family, with nephews older than Ronnie, Ronnie became the younger brother that I never had and I like to think that I became the older brother in his life.

Besides losing one of my closest friends, Ronnie’s death is so difficult to accept because it came as such a shock to all of us. Disbelief at his death is a common feeling that we all share.

Many of you, and I also, have experienced the loss of friends and loved ones, and to each of you my heartfelt condolences. For most of us, though, this is an unexpected loss that has shaken us to our very foundations. Ronnie’s death, at such an early age, feels outside of the natural order of things. I never envisioned my world without Ronnie in it. His vitality, his enthusiasm, the very essence of his life were a constant in the world that I thought would long survive me. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about something that I want to share with him by email or the next time that we talk on the phone or the next time that we see each other.

So, how does one reconcile the loss of such a friend and loved one? My sister, who is older and certainly wiser than I am, offered her sage counsel. She told me that “When you lose someone that was special in your life, someone like Ronnie, you take every opportunity to honor them in your thoughts and your actions on a regular basis, moving forward.”

Celebrate what was special about Ronnie in you life. Do whatever you can to capture that special feeling that Ronnie gave you. Share with the people in your life his enthusiasm, his spontaneity, his compassion, his love of family, his commitment to education, whatever it is that you hold dear about Ron. Remember him, honor him, and he will be right there beside you, sharing his energy and his essence with you and those around you.

Here’s to you little brother, I love you and I miss you. You may have left this world, but you remain a part of my life and I will never forget you and the many special times that we shared together.

Sister- Tracy Mardigian- Kiles

Situation Normal all F Tree’d Up
By Tracy Mardigian-Kiles

At first I was reluctant to come up here today because I was afraid that I could not do my brother Ron justice. But then I realized that Ronnie of all people would appreciate anything I did because one of the most wonderful things about him was his unfailing ability to be supportive. If he were here, in the audience that is, he would be exercising his uncanny knack for catching my eye in a crowd and giving me one of his signature smirks of reassurance. And so here I go.

Ronnie was so many things: a whirling dervish of activity, accomplishment and above all, ideas. He was at home in a contemplative mode or a physically exhilarating mode. Skiing off a cornice or making notes in the margins of a dog eared copy of a book about the Kosmos were equally fulfilling pastimes to him. His beloved double helix illustrates the duality of his nature elegantly and aptly. The more complex the idea or the more filled with irony or contradiction, the better. A favorite that delighted him was an encounter that took place on a busy market street in Nairobi years ago: a street peddler was walking up and down the road selling European football scarves calling out as his sales pitch to us tourists, “genuine, machine made by hand!” Ronnie loved the inherent contradiction in machine made by hand and the added layers of irony of an African hawking European soccer scarves to Europeans in a warm, equatorial country.

I think he appreciated contradiction so much because he himself was full of them. He had a rich interior life but could also bounce off walls better than anyone I know. He had a great capacity for cynicism and yet no one was more sentimental. He could be outrageously irreverent but also profoundly respectful. He cherished his alone time, but was also loyal and loving to his friends. Blues music filled him with awe and yet he appreciated it most in the hands of the iconoclastic Coen Brothers because though he was a person of unfathomable depth, he also appreciated the joke. He was awesome company.

Now I look around this room and I see so many of the elements of Ron’s story as it unfolded sequentially, as our lives all do. From people who were there at his birth to the last friend he emailed and everyone in between: dear friends, colleagues, parents, siblings, best friends, crushes, girlfriends, co-conspirators, bosses, family friends, acquaintances, new friends, old friends, lovers, traveling companions, family… It is remarkable to assemble so much representation of one life in one room as though the sequential nature of time has given into the laws of theoretical physics and time has indeed folded into itself. Ron and I shared a T.S. Eliot phase many years ago so I invoke the poet briefly here:

“It seems,
as one becomes older,
that the past has a pattern,
and ceases to be a mere sequence…

I sometimes wonder if that is
What Krishna meant-
Among other things-or one way
Of putting the same thing:

That the future is a faded song,
A royal rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are
Not yet here to regret,

Pressed between yellow leaves
Of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down,
The way forward, the way back.”

This gathering to celebrate Ron’s too brief history of time is testimony to the notion that we are not simply the sum of the parts of our linear lifespan, but that our impact can be so much more than that, as Ron’s certainly was. Needless to say, Ronnie would have really loved chewing on the idea that his life could fill such a large room!

A particularly endearing habit of Ronnie’s was that he always showed up at Christmas time bearing gifts intended to keep us warm. This year it was slippers, Ugs and fleece lined Crocs. In years past he gave us knit hats, cozy fleece pullovers, under armour- always something to keep us warm. His parting gift is a metaphorical one, but the warmest of all. A sweater, if you will, not machine made by hand like those scarves hawked on the streets of Nairobi, but a hand made, one-of-a-kind original. Every row tells a chapter of his life, the woof and warp the narrative that spans the length to the final knot that completes the story. Every pattern a person or event that meant something to him, a few dropped stitches here and there and a couple of unusual color choices, the humanity reflected best in the flaws and the quest for perfection, a work of art called Ronnie. And so thank you Ronnie for this precious gift: it will envelop me in the warmth of your spirit always.

At the top of Alpine Meadows Ski Resort there is a tree that stands alone, as though keeping sentry over the backside of the mountain. The tree is known as the F Tree because it looks like an F. So many times I rode the Sherwood Chair with Ron and we’d amuse ourselves speculating about what the F stood for. Our ideas ranged from the profane to the sublime to the utterly juvenile. At Alpine last weekend, I rode the Sherwood Chair with my family, filled with an odd combination of grief and joy that only Ronnie could engender. It was an epic powder day and we all agreed that Ronnie must have offered to teach the Powder God how to play backgammon if he would send a nice storm our way. In appreciation, I saluted the F tree. I just knew he was sitting up there in the branches giving me the Ronnie smirk of reassurance as my throat constricted with the thought that the F stood for Farewell. Farewell Ronnie. The order of the universe has shifted yet again and we are left to miss you, even as you have been reborn: as the very best of our memories, a legend and the source of great inspiration. I love you.