River: Abraham Savitzky (May 29, 1919 - Feb. 5, 1999)

[mdlbear]

It's been 19 years since my father died. He introduced me to science fiction, computers, digital filtering, electronics, and folk music, among other things. His paper on digital filtering of spectra is one of the most-cited papers in in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Dad was as much a packrat as I am, so there was always a good supply of reading material around the house: magazines including CACM, Science, Analog (and its predecessor, Astounding), Galaxy, American Scientist, and others; plus a small collection of computer design and SF books (including a few by his grad-school classmate Isaac Asimov).

He was also the gentlest person I've ever met.

Links:

Abraham Savitzky - Wikipedia

Savitzky–Golay filter - Wikipedia

Smoothing and Differentiation of Data by Simplified Least Squares Procedures. - Analytical Chemistry (ACS Publications)

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

Rainbow's Edge

I guess I'm not up to saying anything more today. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1999, a little over two weeks after Colleen's mother died of breast cancer. It's a rough couple of weeks, and I never really know why until I remember.

Comments

HUGS if you want them

[dialecticdreamer]

That's a hard hit to weather, no matter how many years pass. It's wonderful that your father HAS a wikipedia page, though!

Re: HUGS if you want them

[mdlbear]

Thanks! ((Hugs back gratefully))

[moem]

Your dad sounds amazing. It can't be easy having lost him.

[mdlbear]

Thanks! Yeah; I keep running across things I want to call and tell him about.

A song that you probably know.

[markc1957]

I know the feeling, Steve. John McDermott does one of the best renditions of 'The Old Man' that I've encountered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNL_wGZgV5Q

Re: A song that you probably know.

[mdlbear]

Thanks. No, I hadn't heard it before.

Hugs

[pocketnaomi]

I'm so sorry for your loss, big brother. It gets "better" in the sense that one doesn't spend quite so much of one's time actively grieving, after a while, but it doesn't really get better for those moment when one is.

Your family is here for you.

Re: Hugs

[mdlbear]

Thanks, little sister. Our family is wonderful, and I appreciate your help.

Yeah; this year it didn't really start to hit me until yesterday or the day before. It's a small improvement, but I'll take it.

[thnidu]

((hug))

[mdlbear]

Thanks!

[mama_kestrel]

Hugs. I wish there were more I (or anyone) could do.

[mdlbear]

((hugs)) Hugs are enough. Thanks.

[we_are_spc]

*hugs*

Losing any parent is hard. watching one of mine losing one of theirs wasn't any easier.

I'm sorry for your los.

-Fallon~

[mdlbear]

Thank you! *hugs* Yeah; that's pretty rough, too.

[acelightning]

I was about to start by typing, "My dad died in 1998..." when it struck me that it was exactly 20 years ago this week. He was a month short of his 80th birthday. And now I'm too overcome to write anything coherent about him.

He wasn't famous for anything. He'd been going to engineering school, but then World War II interrupted his college career, and by the time he came home, he never got a chance to get his degree. He had a great rapport with all kinds of machinery, though, and he was a born tinkerer - traits he passed on to me. So he worked in the aircraft factory (Grumman Aviation, where he and I both had very small parts in building the Lunar Modules), or drove a tractor-trailer rig, to support my mom and me.

He taught me how to solder mil-spec, and do an oil change on a car, and hundreds of other useful things. It never occurred to him that girls weren't supposed to be capable of learning them; he saw that I was interested in stuff at a very early age, and he knew that I was going to do things like that whether or not I was supposed to, and he wanted to make sure I knew how to do them correctly and safely. (My mother would have liked me to be more "ladylike", but she also understood that would never happen. And she taught me to cook and bake, and basic typing, and how to use the card catalog in the library.)

I remember how proud he was when I installed extension phones in every room of the house except the bathroom, while he was driving a truckload of corrugated cardboard to South Carolina. I remember how proud of me he was when I learned radio operations, and hosted and engineered my own radio show - he made all the guys at work listen to it. I remember how he walked me proudly down the aisle at my wedding.

And twenty years have passed, and now I'm crying too hard to say,
"Daddy, are you still proud of me?"

[mdlbear]

*hugs* All my sympathy.

I'm afraid there isn't much else I can say right now.

[acelightning]

"Shared pain is halved..."

Thank you.

[archangelbeth]

Many condolences.

[mdlbear]

Thanks.