We are all extremely saddened over the death of Kathy’s brother Ted, aka the Vorlon. He put up a valiant fight against lung cancer. And even when we knew that death would be his final out come, the reality of it was still very difficult to bear.

What can I say about Ted? I have so many fond and loving memories of the man. He was a man who gave his cars names and assumed the title of Vorlon. He was a hard worker and yet, he took time to enjoy life.

It took me several years to get to know the man. This was mainly because the only contact I really had with him was at family gatherings. These events were usually quite brief so between the parents and the siblings, I had very little opportunity to speak with him. It wasn’t until I got to spend some time with him outside of “family gatherings” that I finally got to know him. One of these occasions was a trip to MA.

Since we traversed the entire state, it is difficult to define every place that we visited. But, one event that I remember was getting on the train in Braintree and taking it to Boston.

Once in Boston, we took in all of the historic sites and visited Quincy Market where we sampled cheese. When we returned to Braintree, we discovered that not only did you have to pay to get on the train, you also had to pay to get out of the train station in Braintree. And while we had purchased the correct number of tokens, we didn’t realize that we needed to save one to actually get out of the train station. And so, having deposited all of our tokens in Boston, we did not have the token needed to get out of the train station at Braintree.

Of course, at this time, all we could think of was the Kingston Trio singing about “poor old Charlie”. Fortunately, we did not have to get back on the train as the station master understood our dilemma and let us leave.

On another occasion, I got to know Ted while at Cedar Point which is an amusement park in Ohio. We both took an avid interest in the roller coasters. Not only did we enjoy riding on them, we were also intrigued with the engineering of them. We watched with fascination as little sensors kept track of the cars on the coaster while pneumatic brakes hissed as they controlled the cars speed.

And who could forget Ted’s breakfast concoctions. Cooked grains with fruit and honey. And lets not forget the breakfast smoothies that he whipped up in the blender.

I particularly enjoyed discussing theology and philosophy with Ted. He was a boarder line Calvinist who had a hard time accepting the concept of predestination. Unfortunately, I was not very good at explaining it to him.

I am going to miss Ted very much.