Brian Howard.

Some folks affect you disproportionately. Brian has been one of those. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. It’s probably silly for me to pull the word “hero” into the description, but I’m not sure I can really avoid the word either. Little things can confer that status on a young mind, and once conferred, it has a funny way of sticking.

My parents used to live in California. My dad’s a musician, and music was what brought them into a friendship with Brian and his wife Lynne. Music and, I suspect, a shared appreciation for goofiness.

Later on, my mom and dad moved to Kentucky, where dad started teaching at the university. Pretty soon they had their first kid, Cricket. (Actually, Chris, but until about 9th grade there was not a soul in this world who called me anything but “Cricket”. My oldest friends often still do.)

Anyway, Brian and Lynne stayed in touch, and visited a few times. I was five or six. Old enough to draw Lynne a picture of a rainbow, but too young to remember I’d done it. Then a few more years went by and we visited them. I don’t know exactly how old I was then, but it was old enough to remember. And remember I do. Because I was awestruck.

Brian worked at Apple Computer. And despite my infamously porous memory, the day he drove us over to see his office is not something I ever expect to forget.

The walls. The walls were made of white boards. All of them! Every hallway! I mean, you could just reach out and draw on the freaking walls! And you could see where engineers had stopped and talked and caught an idea right there without having to run back to their desks for paper.

I’m sure that many companies were doing something similar at the time, but I’m also quite sure I’d never seen anything like it and the idea of just walking over and writing on a wall was just mind-blowing to me.

Then there was…the hardware room. I have no idea what it really was, but I remember Brian leading us in. It was long, and it was not terribly wide, and on every surface lay a computer. Dozens of machines, with their skins off and their guts sticking out, and instruments for computer surgery sitting next to them. The room smelled of electronics and plastic. And everywhere, everywhere there were screens. Black and white screens, painted with the curious imagery of a dozen different screen savers. One in particular was burned¹ into my memory: animal eyes. Blinking, blinking animal eyes, staring out into the darkness of the machine room when Brian flicked off the lights and closed the door to leave.

When I trace back the thread of my interest in computers, that visit with Brian lies somewhere near the very beginning. And if you dig through my hard drive you’ll find an old text file where I managed to save a few emails between us. Not a lot, but over the years, you could see his generosity and kindness shining through. I once wrote him an earnest, almost feverish letter describing a vision I’d had for Apple’s business plan. Or I’d talk about my science fair project, and then he’d describe what hardware problem he was working on, which I eagerly read, and then responded with naive but well-intentioned ideas about things he might try.

They were messages full of youthful, impractical energy. A less generous soul might have labeled them stupid.

But Brian was a sweet and generous soul. And he never, ever made me feel stupid.

Brian passed away yesterday at 6:45 pm. Cancer. A mysterious cancer that the world’s best doctors could not understand or, ultimately, treat. He fought it for years. He fought it with incredible humor and good will. I’ve been told that a couple of days ago, when he came home from the hospital, his daughter Mika asked him if he needed anything. His reply? “I could use some hair.”

A few years ago my parents and I met up with Brian and Lynne in Tennessee. He was there to see a doctor. My dad was nominally there for a music workshop, but more importantly we were there to see Brian and Lynne. We took a hike down some gorgeous trails, and we found a rock formation that we thought looked like a throne. Brian hopped up and gave us a regal pose:

Brian’s Apple employee number was 32. ² He was one of four people on the original Macintosh team. He once mentioned that, as far as he knew, he was the oldest continuous employee of Apple. Not Steve Jobs. Not Steve Woz. Brian.

The world is down a creative and generous soul today. A gentle soul with no time for self-pity but all the time in the world for a geeky kid with big, silly ideas. And maybe it’s impossible to trace the causes of a life, but I suspect I might not be doing what I’m doing if not for Brian.

So here’s to you, man. Here’s to your kindness. And here’s to Lynne, too. And here’s to high tea at Tea on the Mountain. Here’s to all those discounts on new Macs you got us when I was growing up. Here’s to listening to kids and treating them with respect.

Thank you.

Edited to add: The Mercury News did a really nice story on Brian. It’s the only place I’ve seen that did.

1- I suppose that’s ironic.

2- “When I forgot my badge just last week, the Building 5 receptionist did the time-honored wait-for-rest-of-the-digits pause.” – Commenting on his ID number in an email from January 16, 2008