Farewell to a Friend

I really intended for this blog site to be for fun, but I've found that it can actually be much more than that. It can be a route for personal expression. I don't know how many of oyu actually read my posts because I really only get responses from a few loyal readers. I hope that this post gets read by a large number of folks because the person it is written about deserves to be remembered, I only hope Ido him justice!

Yesterday morning I came into work as on most Monday's with the anticipation of a heavy workload and lots of new and exciting discoveries to be made by the end of the week (yeah I know, it's only soap). Unlike most Monday's it turned out to be a very sad and somber day. The message light was blinking on my phone, and I thought OK who just couldn't wait until Monday to add something else to my schedule. Unfortunately it was the phone call I never hoped to receive. The sister of my friend and coworker had called to inform me that he had died.

Ellis Gregg was more than just a member of my team, he was a brilliant scientist, a damn funny man, and he shared my deep appreciation for a finely brewed ale! Professionally ellis was a continuous liquids processing expert. I've never known anyone else that could design a system, that would run to specification, after a mere 5 minute conversation. This leaves a big hole in my organization that will be hard to fill!

Personally Ellis was one of the funiest (if that's a word) people I've ever met. Of course his humor was sort of twisted. I need to give a little background here before I can continue: I take my team on off sites each quarter. The typical off site has been for us to take a 1/2 day off on a Friday and go somewhere to have lunch, a few beers, and discuss what happened over the past three months along with what's coming up in the next three.

One particular off site we decided to go to one of the many parks around the Cincy area. I was going to grill out steaks for the team and we would sort of relax, goof off, throw a Frisby, etc. (Let me now appologize to my friends in the park service) Ellis brings his golf clubs. Well actually just his driver and a bucket of balls. We pretty much had the park to ourselves, which was a good thing because Ellis t's up and starts wacking the balls to try to hit the tree line. With that accomplished he decides he should try to hit the lake on the other side of the road. With that accomplished the only target remaining was the road itself! Yep we could see the wheels turning, but we couldn't stop it before it happened. He let loose with a swing that would have made Arnold Palmer proud. The ball went high, but hit it's mark right on the crest of a hill smack dab in the middle of the road. It bounces high, and right over the park ranger's car that pops up over the hill. "Oh man, we are so busted!", we thought, but he didn't even see it. After he passed we fell over laughing and the clubs were promptly returned to Ellis' truck.

I'll never forget that day, and I'll never forget Ellis!

I now have two tasks remaining that I will likely put off until the end of the week, neither of which did I ever expect to have to do. I'll need to box up all of Ellis' pesonal belonging's from his desk to give to his family, and I'll need to prepare a job posting to look for his replacement. Life goes on.

Good Bye Ellis, We'll miss you!