Stanley Spitzer – the creator and relentless innovator of the Rhodes 22 sailboat; the inventor of the earlier Picnic 17; the love of Rose Spitzer’s life for more than 70 years; father of Cindy, Scott, and Skip Spitzer; dear brother of Elton Spitzer (also a legend in his time); the impossibly precocious first born of Harold and Gertrude Spitzer; the Purdue University trained electrical engineer, self-taught Madison Avenue copywriter, management consultant, wire recorder salesman, and builder of mid-century homes so unconventional he had to go to court to defend his roof lines; the 98-year-old World War II Navy veteran; the perpetually young risk-taker who never saw a mountain too tall or a dream too distant; the skinny can-do kid from Brooklyn who dragged a sunken sailboat out of Sheepshead Bay and thought he would live forever – has died.

Every person is a universe.  A solar system of friends, relatives, and countless people we touch in countless way, often without fully knowing who or how much.

And every death is a universe imploding.  A world and all its stories suddenly gone.

No words can capture a person’s life.  Just know that if you are reading this right now, that means you – the full, evolving universe of you – intersected with Stan in some way and left your mark.  As he certainly left his on us.

Goodbye, daddy.