“How easy it is for many of us to consider those who are academically inclined as two-dimensional people, bookish and isolated. Brian defied these stereotypes, and his life may be a wake-up call to us never to underestimate the mysteries of the human spirit and the sacred and unique wonder of each human being.”

I honor here the sacred and unique wonder of Professor Andrew Lange and his many, many accomplishments and gifts to the world in both his public and private life. May he rest in peace and may those of us who carry on honor the values and kindness he exemplified so well in life.

Other scientists who appeared to have had it all but who committed suicide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scientists_who_committed_suicide

Anyone who lives with a severe form of this disease and still manages to contribute to the world like Professor Lange did has my undying admiration. I believe Job had it easier from some of the accounts I’ve read of people who’ve suffered from severe depression.

I knew him for four years while he was a student and I was a young English teacher at his high school in Connecticut.  I was a first year yearbook adviser and Andy as a Freshman started hanging around the office with his camera in tow. He was a such a  reliable, talented, good humored, responsible young man I knew I needed him there to help make our work a success. I was impressed with the respect his classmates had for him and the collegial way he worked with the staff.  Those years working with him were a pleasure. 

I remember a long afternoon driving him around to sites in Redding so he could take pictures of historical sites for a section in the yearbook we were hoping would celebrate the bicentenial of the town.

And I remember particularly how he worked with one of the younger would be photographers on our staff who couldn’t manage to turn in a roll of film that wasn’t consistently out of focus!  We puzzled over what to do about it.  My impatient thought was not to issue the fellow any more film until he learned how to focus his camera.

It was Andy who figured out that the younger photographer needed to have his eyes examined. Andy convinced him to have an exam and within two weeks his young mentee showed up wearing glasses and happily handed in the first of many rolls of film we could use!

Looking at the tributes that have been written about Andy in the days since his unsettling death I am struck by the number of people who were helped by him: helped by his guidance, his teaching, his mentoring influence, his kindness and sensitivity.

Remarkably, young Andy showed me a patient path to working with a student and gave a classmate a clearer view of his surroundings. Isn’t that what he did for all of us in giving us a clearer vision of the expanding universe? Such lifelong consistency. Such a loss. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

Many of you know him as a warm, generous adult. To me he will always be Prince Charming to my Cinderella, as in the 4th grade school play, and my first official boyfriend, who rode his bicycle up the spectacular hills to my family’s home in Easton, CT.

My heart goes out to his family, friends, and colleagues, and to all who feel this loss.

I began my formal education one morning in September of 1962 at Samuel Staples School in Easton, Connecticut. Andy Lange started his academic career a few hours later, since kids on the north side of town did their half-day of kindergarten in the afternoon.

The two of us attended many of the same classes through Grade 8, and quite a few more after we moved up to the regional high school in neighboring Redding. In addition to sharing a first name, each of us was the oldest of three children. We both played Little League baseball. We attended the same birthday parties. We were about the same size and build, and both of us had a one-syllable last name that ended with a “G’ sound. Sometimes during the first week of a new school year teachers would joke about having two Andys in the class and wonder aloud how they’d be able to tell us apart. But it never took them long to figure out which of us was which.

Andy Lange’s test scores were always located on the lower left-hand side of the bell curve. Mine were generally found on the extreme right. A significant percentage of the acceptance I got in high school was derived from the knowledge other kids had that as long as I was in the class, none of them had to worry about getting the lowest grade. On more than one occasion Andy Lange was class president. I was the perennial class clown.

Andy Lange achieved international renown as a cosmologist, but as a kid in Easton he was always something even more significant: a truly nice person. As a teenager he was universally liked and admired by everyone at Joel Barlow High School: faculty, honor students, jocks, musicians, cigarette smokering rebels, and everyday Joes and Janes. His always-inclusive manner featured a unique and impish sense of humor. He had no discernable mean streak, which then as now was unusual for an adolescent male. He never flaunted his considerable cerebral talents, and treated everyone with respect. Whatever the opposite of an elitist is was what Andy Lange was.

Apparently he hadn’t changed in that regard. Many of the postings here reflect that. It’s striking that he was loved at least as much for who he was than admired for being what he was. Whoever said, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice,” must have been thinking about Andy.

When I first heard of my old friend’s untimely passing I briefly thought about how impressive it was that someone from our small hometown could rate a detailed obituary in the New York Times. But I’d much prefer to have read an eloquent summary of Doctor Lange’s remarkable 80 or 90 year life three or four decades from now, rather than catching up on his noteworthy but all too short one now.

At least three of the four recent suicides, including his, are known to have use the same method. It’s also been known for months that the two undergrads specifically used the exact same method.

The successive suicides in such a small and close knit community, and the knowledge of a easy and reliable method, may be influencing people to act on their suicidal thoughts. This is a time for all members of the community to look out for each other.

In silence so loud, with words unsaid,
Do others really know what’s in my head?
For I think about the loss each and every day,
But in all the blank faces don’t know what to say.
I suppose neither do others, but I don’t know
And I’m not sure if I should say so
Or should anyone?
Or should no one?
But that seems bad,
As a person recently died who was so sad,
Alone in his own thought and feeling
To leave me and others behind reeling
Not knowing what to do or say
And wondering if it’s really right and okay
to talk about it all out loud anyway?

PHL 1/28/10