In my family, there is a tradition that mushy bananas are not discarded or baked but rather peeled, placed into a large bowl, mashed together (a spoon works nicely), to then be gloriously microwaved into an oblivion of saccharine substance that our family affectionately calls "banana mush". Upon hearing of my family's quasi-dessert, Austin was skeptical but interested. And so one evening that Austin and I were loitering in his apartment following his delicious enchilada dinner, I noted with glee that Austin had bananas in his apartment, and could make good of his promise to try "banana mush". Unfortunately, these bananas weren't ripe enough to make a good banana mush, and the final product was less than desirable. But Austin was brave enough to eat the microwaved banana and still dub it "interesting". It reminds me that adventures can extend beyond the great outdoors to every aspect of our lives, even the mundane quotidian, including what and how we chose to eat. Austin took great joy in learning and executing new recipes; and he certainly didn't shy away from the oddity of microwaved bananas (despite his earlier childhood inclinations to eat only white, bland foods). Try something new to eat! (And if it's microwaved bananas, make sure that you watch the microwave- they boil over really easily).
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Austin - Just wanted to let you know that hearing about your scientific talents and great heart from your Mom inspires me to be a better, more involved mentor to the students and residents who come my way. I can only imagine what an amazing person she raised as she has inspired me so much in such a short time. We've had some great storms in ABQ lately, and knowing how much you loved crazy weather, as do I, they make me think of you even though we never met. - Kate
Last month, I wrote an article for my company's newsletter to share my experience with all our customers here at Trakware. This may seem like an odd thing to share with a customer but I feel there are many lessons to be learned from our experience with the search for Austin and how it affected our view of the world. Many people have a negative view of the world and I wanted to let people know that has not, in any way, been our experience. Here's my article: Austin Hudson-Lapore, 1992-2013 On the evening of June 13th, my wife and I got the call that every parent dreads. “Your son left the apartment yesterday evening and we can’t find him. We've called all his friends and no one has seen him since yesterday!” My son Austin was a rising senior studying Biochemistry at the University of Chicago. The day before, he had completed his last final in the early afternoon and then returned to his apartment. It was forecast to be a stormy evening in Chicago as a rare kind of thunderstorm, a “derecho”, was passing over the city. At 8:34pm, with the rain tapering off, he logged off his computer, left his apartment and disappeared. It was obvious to everyone who knew Austin that he’d gone towards the lake front, half a mile away, to watch the lightning as the thunderstorms pass over the city. He loved exploring the lake front parks and had been an avid weather buff since childhood. Thus ensued a frantic search for the next six days in the area between his apartment in Hyde Park and the lake shore. With the media closely following the story, friends, family, volunteers, police, marine units and divers searched for him. Finally, on the 7th day, a fisherman saw a shape in the water in the dawn light and the search was over. This story is not so much about how my son lived or died but rather about what we learned in our search for him. We learned that the world can be incredibly kind - With our faces splashed across newspapers and television, many knew us by sight. People called from passing cars their prayers and best wishes. We were stopped on the street to be hugged and prayed over. The people at FedEx Office and Staples printed all our missing posters at cost or for free. Businesses with private security cameras poured over grainy images looking for our son passing. Taxis stopped and offered us free rides. Volunteers papered the area with Austin’s image. I even had two kids dressed like gang-bangers walk up to me to shake my hand and to tell me their hommies were scouring their territories for him and for me to be strong. We learned you have to take matters in to your own hands – Although the police put a lot of resources into the search, they also have limited time and manpower. We worked from morning to night coordinating help, getting security camera footage, posting missing flyers, updating websites and Facebook, working leads and talking to the media. The images of us driving the search brought in many more prayers and offers of support. We learned to ask for and accept help – We used the media to appeal for help in our search. That resulted in community organizers offering their help with flyering and a search dog (over the objections of the police). With churches forming prayer circles for his safe return. With boaters offering to help us with a water search. And with volunteer searchers who scoured the alleyways and wooded areas for Austin. We learned to reach out using social media – With the help of my very internet savvy sister, niece and her best guy, their website and social media campaigns raised awareness of our search with the media and among younger people who don’t follow traditional media. It also made our search national and international news with the story appearing in the press from London to Taiwan. And finally, we relearned the power of family – My family is a very strong one. Even though this was a terrible time, we all supported and loved each other 100%. That love and support came through in all the media we did and we think it’s one of the reasons people were so supportive of us. It maintained our spirits then and it will help us to heal now. Because in the end all that’s really important in life is family. Give your kids and grandkids a hug for us. As I was driving across the plains and short grass prairies of eastern Colorado, thunderstorms brewed to the north. The wide open view made it easy to watch the storms develop and sheets of rain pour to the earth. They did not fall straight down, though; they came down in curved ribbons with upper winds blowing one direction and the surface winds blowing them in another. The lightening bolted from the clouds to the ground and back up. It was beautiful to watch and amazingly the storms moved east as I drove east and I never drove into them. I felt Austin's spirit that day and appreciated the strength and beauty of the weather more because of him.
Last summer for Austin's birthday, a bunch of us planned a surprise party for him. We wanted it to be a real surprise so all of us told Austin that we were busy (poor guy) and couldn't hang out that night. On the day of his birthday, Aenea distracted Austin with an incredibly long grocery run while the rest of us stayed behind to set up. Admittedly, we were not the best organizers, so the whole thing was slightly haphazardly thrown together - Nora was sent out last minute to go find balloons and candles, lights were strung around the somewhat half-unpacked living room, paper hats were taped together on the spot, you get the idea. Once Aenea gave us the warning, we all stood giggling in a line holding up letters that spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY! When Austin walked in and saw us, his face split into the most amazing grin I've ever seen. He hugged each of us in turn and told us that it was the first surprise party anyone had ever pulled for him.
For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking of that wonderful smile and the party we threw. Aenea mentioned that Austin had a favorite smile for each of his friends - well, this morning I decided that that one is my favorite Austin smile. So spontaneous, so happy, so touched, so genuinely... surprised. Miss you, Austin. Wish we could throw you a hundred thousand more surprises. Austin,
Your parents and your sister asked us to live life more fully in your honor. I think about this simple request every day and have tried to incorporate it into the fabric of my life. Sometimes I do small things, such as traveling a different route to work so that my window view is fresh and so that I am reflecting on new images as I start my day. I have also asked myself to do bigger things, most recently to don wetsuit and snorkel mask and slip off the side of a boat for some deepwater snorkeling. I am not a great swimmer, nor did I know how to snorkel. In fact, the thought of breathing through a plastic tube in ocean current terrified me. I did it, Austin, because you would have appreciated the view. There were sharks, sea turtles, rainbow fish, striped pufferfish, purple and red coral, sea stars, turquoise king fish. I would have missed it all if I hadn't had your inspiration to guide me and your spirit of adventure to comfort me. You have given me a gift unknowingly. I am deeply grateful. Love, Susan I went to school with Austin as a child in Albuquerque, and had him in many of my classes. He was always the boy who could be counted on to help other students with their difficulties in Math and Science, and he was always appreciated.
After losing touch with Austin in middle school, I thought that one day he'd be on the news as a scientist or a famous college professor because he was so dedicated to learning and helping his schoolmates to learn as well. Learning about this tragedy breaks my heart. For years, I've hoped to talk to him again, and it's sad that the one way for me to see the man my friend became turns out like this. My deepest condolences to Austin's family, as well as my prayers. Austin was a sweet boy and a good friend who will always be loved and remembered. One of 2 year old Austin's favorite pastimes was building his brio train track. From bridges to tunnels to turntables, split lines to stations.... The trick was to use every single piece and still make the track fully functional, no trailing a long bit of track into the kitchen... I loved it too. Laurie excelled at it (no surprises there) Engineering at its best. Another favorite pastime was heading downtown to the Art Institute where Austin would insist on heading straight for the surrealists. He loved it there and would spend ages taking in all of the paintings. But especially transfixed by Magritte's 'Time Transfixed', which shows a steam train coming out of a fire place. I wonder did 20 year old Austin hold any memory of having so loved those paintings as a small boy? I had so looked forward to meeting Austin 'the man' in Chicago, a city which he, Aidan and I would scramble around 18 years ago. I take comfort from the fact that some of his friends are doing the things they had planned to do with Austin, together. In October I will take my children to the park that we played in, to the art institute and to the lake, where my 3 year old, Gulliver, thinks he can swim out to save my friend. I wish he was right, I love you Austin.
I promised Austin that we would walk along the lake at dawn to the Field museum and have a picnic before I went to work one day this summer. Today, I did so with his roommate. We got up at 4:30 so we could meet at 5 and be at Promontory Point by 5:30, where we sat as the sun rose. Then we wended our way along the lakefront trail the 6 and a bit miles to the museum where we ate delicious pastries. Along this walk, I kept imagining Austin sharing in our joy in the out of doors, even at this ridiculous hour, seeing him roll his eyes as I stopped to look at plants along the side of the path, and feeling him hugging me we completed our journey.
For those of you who may not know me, I’m Ezra Depperman. I taught Austin Chemistry, I coached him in Science Olympiad, and I was fortunate enough to be chosen as his adviser for his senior year. I’m grateful to Laurie, Gregg, and Aidan for inviting me to speak today.
From the start of class, it was obvious that Austin was exceptional. Though he was in the ninth grade when he took my class, based on his slight build and small stature, you might have wondered why a mid-schooler was taking Chemistry. But when you heard Austin speak, the question you were more likely to ask was “what is a college student doing in high school?” When I’d pose the most difficult questions to the class, the questions nobody else could answer, Austin would always have some thoughtful and insightful discourse on the matter. And he was frequently able to expound far beyond the intended scope of the question. How Austin was able to do this without being regarded by his classmates as a “super nerd” was somewhat mysterious to me at first. I’ll never forget one incident when I presented a question to which I naively thought I knew the answer. (Not that this was the first time I’d ever been stumped, mind you, but in the past I’d been able to avoid the appearance of ignorance). I was lecturing about subatomic particles. I presented the class with the masses of protons, neutrons, and electrons. I then posited that an atom’s mass should be the sum of the masses of the particles comprising it. Now the masses you’ll find in any periodic table are based on the standard of a single carbon-12 atom weighing exactly 12 amu. And a carbon-12 atom contains six protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons. So, without having tried this calculation myself beforehand, I asked the class to add up the combined masses of 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons. To my dismay, the result was NOT exactly 12 amu. It was slightly more. I was befuddled. I had a feeling that, this time, blaming “rounding error” just wouldn’t cut it. I was stammering, deciding whether or not to succumb to panic, when Austin came to my rescue. Raising his hand, he looked me calmly in the eye and stated, “I think I know where the extra mass goes.” To my great wonder, amazement, and delight, Austin wrote the equation E = mc2 on the board and proceeded to expound on relativity, and how the formation of elements from their subatomic particles produces energy. That this energy comes from the conversion of mass, and it can be calculated from the mass defect using Einstein’s most famous equation. Now I had just finished my PhD in physical chemistry, and I thought I knew the subject pretty well, but apparently, there were some holes in my education. To be upstaged by this diminutive ninth-grader should have been humiliating. And I was humbled, but Austin delivered his brilliant explanation with such a sense of wonder, intellectual curiosity, and joyful enthusiasm, that I totally forgot that I was supposed to feel humiliated. The lessons Austin taught that day have become a part of my teaching. Even now, I present the subject of mass defect the same way: having the students perform the calculation and then discussing why the result is not as expected. Turns out that these are the instances when you learn the most in science, when a result is different from what you expect. Moreover, having been gently humbled by Austin, I’ve learned that my students have just as much to teach me as I have to teach them. Even as a small child, Austin was an eager student of anything and everything he found interesting. Observing the world around him, Austin would hypothesize about its behavior, make careful observations, and revise his hypotheses as necessary. Not taking anything for granted, Austin became proficient at using the scientific method at an age years younger than most people are when they first hear the expression “Scientific Method”. As deeply as Austin’s loss hurts, we can at least derive some comfort in the fact that he spent his final moments engaged in the activity he loved most. That’s something we should all aspire to. Now, ninth graders with a working understanding of relativity are still somewhat rare, even at the Academy. But the spirit of inquiry that Austin brought to class every day, the sense that the universe is comprehensible if we only care to observe, is alive and well. If Austin were here today, I’m sure he’d agree that among the greatest joys in life is learning about ourselves and this beautiful world we inhabit, and sharing that understanding with others. Saying “yes” to new experiences rather than putting them off for later. And it’s not just science – Any idea that piqued his interest, Austin would engage with fully. For instance, he also loved Nascar (Right? From early childhood, Austin loved anything with wheels). Studying drivers’ past performance on different courses, he would predict the outcome of the current race. He loved politics – Austin would get the numbers from county elections and try to use them to predict the results of national elections (mind you, this was before anyone had even heard of Nate Silver). He was even a formidable opponent in the game, Scrabble. Austin’s example urges us all, regardless of what our passion may be, to seize opportunities to learn and to share our learning and enthusiasm with others. That’s the true joy in learning – the Joy that nobody knew better than Austin. |
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