I learned so much from Larry at a formative point in my career. He was a generous and gave honest feedback. I remember once he noticed that I was staying late into the evening. He sat down at my desk and asked if I was struggling with my work load. He said that it concerned him when staff were working late and he wanted to know what he could do. I laughed because I was actually working on grad school work before going to my second job. He got worried that I was working another job, but it was at the Stackner Cabaret so I could get free theatre tickets. It turned out that he and Patty were going to the show that night, which is why he was still there at that hour. That’s when we discovered our mutual love of theatre. Another vivid memory was on 9/11 (probably the next day) when he and I worked together to come up with an idea for a special edition Penworthy Bear poster. He couldn’t just sit there without doing SOMETHING and he gave me the opportunity to help create something small to commemorate the tragedy. He was right when he told me when I resigned from Penworthy that I should have thought twice about the company I was joining. He knew their business model and the key players and thought it wasn’t a stable position. I should have listened to him. They laid me off six months later when the reorganized the company! Even today, I was actually doing a search to see if I could contact Larry to get a copy of the template he had us use to write procedures for all of my tasks and to see if he could recommend an app to help us track a project through its steps. I’ve taken the practice of writing procedures to every job, but I’ve always been a bit haphazard about it. Now I want it to be streamlined so I wanted his form. I was shocked and saddened to see that he was gone, and so recently. I wish I had stayed in touch. I’m sure I would have learned another dozen or so lessons.
I am so sorry for the loss of this tremendous human being.