Okay, so chipping in with my pound's worth, for the moment I am one of the younger generation of Josh's friends, having known him for "only" 24 years, in fact since the Retinal Degenerations satellite meeting in Banff, Alberta. A chance encounter - in Calgary airport, hoping to bump into someone who could help me get to this lost place, I vaguely remembered his face from the main ISER conference in San Francisco and dared ask if we might share a hired car - and with his signature kind of bemused slightly shocked expression he acquiesced. Albeit from very different backgrounds, we spotted a moose along the way, and it was quickly clear we were both nature lovers. As luck would have it we were a day early for the meeting, isolated in the Canadian Rockies, and managed to get some construction workers to give us a ride up the mountain in the back of their pick-up. And thus began our endearing friendship, surrounded by wilderness and bighorn sheep. We both quickly recognised each others irreverent (somebody else used this word to describe him, very true) attitudes, and spent the Banff meeting making little innocent digs at each other. We were already confident enough in our relations to risk personal matters - I remember the disco night when we were sitting drinking a beer watching a quite provocative blonde german lady get down on the dance floor. Josh turned to me and said "Do you think if I asked her for a dance she would tell me to get lost?". I slowly looked her up and down, then looked Josh up and down, and softly said "yes". We both burst out laughing.
As I said, very different upbringings - him the quintessential New Yorker, me the backstreet Londoner but also voluntarily exiled to France. We saw each other on average once a year, sometimes more, sometimes less, generally at one of the vision conferences, either the regular ARVO or the irregular (in geographic terms) ISER. As already pointed out by his many other friends, his obsession with good food led us to many wonderful eating experiences, like tasting bear stew in Helsinki. Or home-made panna cotta near Lake Cômo in Italy. Or barbecued baby back ribs in Fort Lauderdale. I had the privilege of staying often at his apartment in the Village, and once visiting Brewster for a week-end to clean up the garden. Josh always made every effort to make me feel at home, once he got tickets to a new Carolyn Carlson performance - only problem was I just stepped off the plane from Europe and was really tired and jet-lagged, trying to keep my eyes open as we watched this very slow-moving and actually very dull show. We joked about this time on so many occasions, somehow he actually seemed embarrassed about having made me suffer when it was pure kindness on his part.
Many things will remain confidential, as personal memories should. But I am sure many people will remember his odd walk, rather disarticulated like he had to consciously think to get all the parts moving together. And his habit of calling friends by their family names - there was "Mertz", and there was "Hicks" (that's me). And his favourite word, which I often impersonated, "a-MAZ-ing". We all seem to agree, a wonderful warm-hearted, unassuming unpretentious generous man. A part of my pleasure in life has vanished with his passing, and I know ARVO will never be the same again. An a-MAZ-ing guy.
As I said, very different upbringings - him the quintessential New Yorker, me the backstreet Londoner but also voluntarily exiled to France. We saw each other on average once a year, sometimes more, sometimes less, generally at one of the vision conferences, either the regular ARVO or the irregular (in geographic terms) ISER. As already pointed out by his many other friends, his obsession with good food led us to many wonderful eating experiences, like tasting bear stew in Helsinki. Or home-made panna cotta near Lake Cômo in Italy. Or barbecued baby back ribs in Fort Lauderdale. I had the privilege of staying often at his apartment in the Village, and once visiting Brewster for a week-end to clean up the garden. Josh always made every effort to make me feel at home, once he got tickets to a new Carolyn Carlson performance - only problem was I just stepped off the plane from Europe and was really tired and jet-lagged, trying to keep my eyes open as we watched this very slow-moving and actually very dull show. We joked about this time on so many occasions, somehow he actually seemed embarrassed about having made me suffer when it was pure kindness on his part.
Many things will remain confidential, as personal memories should. But I am sure many people will remember his odd walk, rather disarticulated like he had to consciously think to get all the parts moving together. And his habit of calling friends by their family names - there was "Mertz", and there was "Hicks" (that's me). And his favourite word, which I often impersonated, "a-MAZ-ing". We all seem to agree, a wonderful warm-hearted, unassuming unpretentious generous man. A part of my pleasure in life has vanished with his passing, and I know ARVO will never be the same again. An a-MAZ-ing guy.
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