I first met Juan when I was around ten years old. He was designing a database at my father's law office, and I was going around and installing stuff on the computers for him. It was during this time that I learned to explore and understand the Macintosh. If nothing else, I can thank Juan for making me learn to think objectively, particularly in the field of computers.

I didn't see Juan much after that summer. He was always there, working at my dad's office, fighting the forces of evil who had manifested themselves in the form of oil and asbestos companies. My last recollection of Juan was at my bar mitzvah when I was fourteen. We were at Pappasitos; I was with the fourteen or so people I could call friends, half of which were adults. Juan gave me a check for $100 dollars, signed in red ink. "Don't worry about the red ink, it's nothing symbolic," I believe he said.

And then he died, on March 16, 1995, driving to Houston from Beaumont after having worked at my father's office and having left at just the time so that a car came across the median of I-10 and struck his car at the 800 mile marker. Poof. That event haunts me to this day. His life, lost so quickly, so randomly, how?

I heard about it on Friday. I hadn't thought about Juan a whole lot, other than having written a thank you note to him,which he never received. But he was dead now, and I wondered what that meant. That night I took a Vernors ginger ale down from my shelf where I stockpiled them, and thought about Juan.

Juan's memorial service was on Monday. It was spring break. I sat in that service and read the brief synopsis of his life that sat inscribed upon a small leaflet of paper. So many things I had not known sat there for me to regret not knowing. He had served extensively for the diplomatic service of Columbia, in Miami, Switzerland, and Sweden, had been in the U.S. Air Force, and had started a volunteer crime prevention organization. Juan had been an artist and a woodworker. It was strange to find out that I never knew him for everything he was

I know Juan as a role model now, a man who did anything and everything, and I believe in him. When I got my current computer and began working on my father's database, I came across a small recording of his. It was two words long, nothing more than an error message that you put in the Sound Control panel. It remains preserved on my hard disk, waiting for the destruction of the universe. As I sit at this computer and program my father's database, or as I read about Spanish and try not to say things with a French accent, I think of Juan. Here's to you, Juan.

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