Andy Stokes - some memories of a friendship by Harry Baya More Final addition
Andy Stokes, M.I.T. ’63, died today, Monday, August 6, 2018, in his home in Altadena, California. He was my best friend. Though we lived far away from each other we remained close. We both noticed that we when we got together, even after a break of several years, it was as if only a few days had passed.
Andy was diagnosed with cancer in April of this year and his health deteriorated steadily from then until today.
He came to my wedding in 1964 and we got together off and on over the years. We met in Cambridge around 1965 and visited 314 Memorial Drive (Theta Delta Chi) as it was being demolished. We stood together in the back room on the first floor with no ceiling or walls and noticed the different coats of paint visible on the back of the radiator next to where the back wall had been.
In 2014 Andy took me to the Burning Man week. In 2015 we sailed on his sail boat to spend the night anchored in a harbor at Santa Catalina. He bought the boat with the intent to sail to Hawaii.
In the fall of last year, 2017, he spent 10 days with me in Bristol, Virginia, where I now live and we had a grand time together. While he was hear we recorded an hour long radio show together. I had asked Andy to select songs to play and he put a lot time and care into making his selections. Here is a link to that show:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/wombatsandmusic/350_wombats_music_oct_2_2017.mp3
Andy was an intense competitive person and he stayed in excellent shape. He was direct, honest, and without pretense – probably more so than anyone I have known. I was proud of him and proud that we were friends.
I and my wife enjoyed visits with Andy and his wife, Sally, in California and here in Virginia and each of us regretted that we lived so far apart.
Here are two photos:
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| Santa Catalina - 2015 | 2018 |
More About Andy
Burning Man
Based on memories of conversations and email exchanges with Andy.
Around 2003 Andy joined some friends to go to the Burning Man week. The friends were part of a camp of 50+ people called AOXOMOXOA. This Burning Man "camp" ( a group who lived together for that week ) had been founded years earlier with a focus on the Grateful Dead. Andy described his first year at Burning Man as one of the most exciting, exhilarating and inspirational experiences of his life. I think he missed one year when ticket sales were messed up, but went every year after that through 2014. Sally went with him the first five years but had school teaching conflicts after that.
Click here to see some pictures Andy took during the week we were at Burning Man in 2014. These and the Wikipedia entry will give you a tiny bit of the flavor of the experience.
Andy’s camp decided to build and support a performance stage that anyone at Burning Man could use and Andy became the stage builder. Others did things like sound, lighting, publicity and the like. This was a very successful undertaking for a number of years. Andy would haul the wooden parts for the stage to the desert and build the stage, a , a fairly big project.
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He also built an outdoor shower (the water heated by the sun) for his camp and hosted a cocktail party each week. Andy was much appreciated and treasured by the other campers in AOXOMOXOA [ a name that he did not care for].. . As intense as he was in normal life, he seemed to become even more alive and charismatic during the week I was with him at Burning Man.
Andy and Sally bought a trailer in 2007 and used it for many outings, including Burning Man. This was my home at Burning Man in 2014.
Juggling:
Related to his Burning Man experience Andy decided to take up juggling. He approached this, as he did most things, with a vengeance, pouring in hours of practice every week for years. He got to where he could juggle three balls fairly well, performed at Burning Man’s “center camp” (where campers can show off their skills) and had a Youtube video of this at one point. Here is a video I found in his Burning Man pictures (unfortunately I do not know how to insert this into a web page so that I'm sure it will play ):
Click for video [ .mov file - played in Firefox browser but downloaded on Chrome browser. If jug.MOV file downloads, double click it to play ]
Another Video [ This one is a .wmv file - might play on some systems ]
He then decided to learn to juggle 4 balls and to learn some complex sequences with three balls. Though he would have a few repetitions of success occasionally, he never mastered these. However, he continued to pursue this holy grail until he became ill. His commitment and frustration were revealing in many ways.
Here is a quote from an April 2008 email from Andy:
I have added another hobby goal to my retirement agenda: juggling. While at Burning Man in 2007, I rode by a camp offering juggling instruction. I stopped, got my 45 minutes worth of beginners instruction from a kid who was then kind enough to let me have the three juggling balls to practice with. I took them back to our camp and tried very hard to get started, but did not succeed. I was told that if one could make twice the number of successive throw catch pairs as the number of objects being attempted, then one could say that he had successfully juggled. For three balls, that means six throw-catch pairs.
I was determined, however, so I continued at home. With some help from demonstrations found on the internet I finally made it to six. The learning curve is not nearly as steep as learning to ride a bike, i.e., once you can ride a bike for 100 feet you can probably ride it for 100 miles. But it is steep enough that I almost could see improvement on a daily basis. Well, now I am into tricks and hope to be able to juggle fire balls at Burning Man 2008. One thing leads to another and now I am struggling with clubs. Clubs are much much harder than balls. It takes a week to achieve noticeable progress. Nonetheless, I am determined to be able to also juggle fire torches at Burning Man 2008.
And if that were not enough, I am also determined to ride a unicycle at Burning Man 2008. Once back in the very early 1970's I did learn to ride a unicycle well enough to go from the driveway to the street, turn around and return up the driveway to the porch from which I had departed. But that was more than 35 years ago. I have been going to a juggling club and am getting some assistance. I have not yet been able to ride any distance at all by myself. The instructor holds my hand as I wobble along. He tells me I am very close. We'll see.
Here is a quote from an October 2009 email from Andy:
I find the way age affects my ability to improve at juggling to be a surprising experience. There are some physical things that I cannot do any more for which I can clearly sense that my body is not capable. But both golf and juggling are not in that class. In golf, I have no sense that I am not hitting the ball as forcefully as I was ten years ago. I only know that I am not because I have an objective measure of how far the ball is going. I don’t have enough of a history with juggling to have a perception of deterioration with age. I don’t have any physical indication that I can sense that my hand-eye coordination is far less at 68 than it was at 18. But my observation of how easily younger people pick it up compared to me tells me that I am far less capable. I can get pretty discouraged at times when I consider how many hours I am spending trying to master some juggling basic without seeing any progress or improvement in consistency or form. Oh, well…….. Nonetheless, after many hours stretched over many weeks, I believe I am about to get past the sticking point on the first advanced juggling trick I have attempted. It is called Mills Mess.
Here is a quote from an email in the fall of 2012:
I can't say that my attempt to learn to juggle four balls is an obsession, but I have kept at it with pitifully little to show for it. I have made just enough progress to keep hope alive but I think I am going on three years now and only 2 or 3 times have I been able to keep it going for as many as 20 consecutive throw/catch sequences - that means 10 for each hand. You may remember that juggling four balls is done by juggling two balls in each hand simultaneously. Although I can do a throw/catch sequence of 50 plus with the left hand alone without a drop and more than 100 with the right hand alone, putting the two together usually breaks down after only three or four sequences in each hand (a total of 6 to 8 throw/catch).
And Another:
However, recently, I have made some measureable progress. A month ago, a total of 8 (4 each hand) was fairly rare. Today, I am doing 10 regularly and 12 more frequently than the 8 of a month ago. I think I had one 14 tonight. But I have been at this for three years now.
The Boat:
Around 2011 Andy began thinking about buying a sail boat and sailing to Hawaii. He had been a very enthusiastic sailor while at M.I.T. and had done some sailing after moving to California but had never, so far I know, sailed out of sight of land or owned a boat capable of open ocean sailing. He knew that to do this he would have to acquire a boat capable of such a trip and learn the many related skills that would be needed.
In 2015 he bought a “Pacific Seacraft 34 sail boat”, a 34 foot sailboat fully equipped to be sailed to Hawaii.
Andy took me out on the boat several times, once with our wives. The most memorable outing was our trip to Santa Catalina where we spent the night in the harbor. (“26 Miles across the sea…. “).
Before he bought a boat Andy had begun looking into what he would need to learn in order to sail to Hawaii. Once he bought the boat he dug in hard and felt he had learned most of what he needed to know after about 18 months. This included a fairly detailed understanding of how to use, and make basic repairs to, all the equipment on the boat (navigation, plumbing, engine, sails, rigging etc.)
He originally had two prospective partners to sail with, but they fell through. Andy was seriously considering going on his own. I did not volunteer both because I did not feel mobile and strong enough to be of much help, tend to get seasick, and just could not see doing something this challenging at my age. I did feel a little guilty about that.
Andy had some health issues, a hernia, concerns about memory loss, that weakened his commitment, but I don’t think he had given up completely on sailing to Hawaii when he got sick this year.
I was impressed with his willingness to take on a goal of this scope at his age.
M.I.T - A Discussion:
Some of you may know that over the years Andy became somewhat negative about his M.I.T. education. He was positive about his experience with the fraternity, but less so with the academic experience.
Part of this view was that most of his career was spent as a computer programmer, mostly in assembler languages I think, and a manager. He got into this area after a few years of drifting, studying Physics, and, to some extent, being a California hippy. Andy had little or no exposure to computers while at M.I.T.
At one point Andy said something along the lines of “I got nothing from M.I.T. There was nothing in my work career that I could not have done without having gone to M.I.T.”
I found this difficult to accept so I said “Oh come on, Andy, you must have learned something useful.” After a pause he said “Well maybe there was one thing. A number of times in my career, especially at Xerox, I would be in meetings where projects were being allocated to individuals attending the meeting. Sometimes the person allocating the projects would say things like 'This is a particularly challenging project. Whoever takes it should be prepared for a rough path. ' " Andy said that when he heard this he thought “Hard? Tell me about hard. I went to M.I.T. That was a rough path for me. I worked on a number of problems I could not solve. I’ve experienced being stuck a lot. I know what it’s like and I can handle it and know it does not mean I can’t keep going and do fairly well. ” And then, he said, “ I would take those projects.” He said he thought this helped his career. I said I thought that was a rather important thing to have learned.
Some Work Experiences
At one point Xerox had just developed a digital printer. It was new and quite expensive and, at that point, only available for custom installations for deep pocket clients. A branch of the U.S. Government asked Xerox if they could build a printer for them that could print large volumes of checks with different names and amounts on each check, like a payroll. The technology to do this had not previously existed. Given what had already been done with the machine they knew this could be done, but it would require significant hardware and software modifications in order to deliver a reasonably reliable production machine. The cost would probably exceed a million dollars.
The group manager informed all those who might work on the project that there would be a meeting in one week to discuss the project and create a project team. Andy saw this as an opportunity. He got copies of all the manuals on the existing machine and spent the week reading them and working with the machine. I think he stayed up all night a couple of times and had to finagle access to an existing machine. He modified the code and did some jury rigging to be able to get the current machine to produce what he felt was needed. It was not a long term solution, but more of a proof of concept.
When the meeting was held the group manager asked if anyone present would like to describe what the project entailed. Andy volunteered. He began by tossing out printouts of the exact check format requested, with variable names and amounts. “This” he said “is what we want the machine to be able to do. I got the current machine to print these.” Andy was made project manager for that project.
Another accomplishment he mentioned was having written assembler code used in one of the space projects. I believe it was one of the Mars rover projects and Andy’s code would receive the bit stream of information coming from the rover and convert it into useable data. He said it had to be very tight code that would use very little memory and be very reliable. He was proud of the fact that people who put the final package together told him that his was either the only one, or maybe one of a handful, of code pieces they were given, out of many, that did not require any re-writes.
Reflections:
Though most of the above is from memory, I started looking through my correspondence with Andy since 2007 to find some of the dates, and the pictures. That brought back a lot of memories.
I was lucky to have been in such a relationship. “Kind universe, you’ve been good to me”
Harry Baya August 10, 2018
Final (probably) addition, August 16, 2018
Andy moved to California shortly after graduation. He came out to my wedding in New Jersey in 1964.
Here is a brief summary of what little I recall about what he did before he got into computers. He told me he took some graduate courses in Physics and concluded that was not for him. He had a small sail boat for a while, and spent time with Jim Kee, who had returned from the Peace Corps and was living in L.A. Andy was married for a few years to Susan. I met her and liked her. I think she was an anthropologist.
I think he had a few jobs, none that he liked, and one friend mentioned that he experimented with being a free spirited hippy. Eventually he became dissatisfied with his professional life and decided to try something different. He saw an ad in the paper offering to train people in computers and computer programming. It was probably offered by a company called “Computer Science”. They hired him when he completed the course and had been one of the top students.
He told me that he went to be interviewed on the day given in the paper and found a long line of people waiting on the street. Many were being turned away. Andy decided to go to the front of the line and say “I have a BS in Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T. and would like to apply”. The man sent him right in and he was accepted and excelled.
He worked for “Computer Science” for a while, and maybe some other companies, but eventually ended up working as a programmer for JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab). He did well there for a number of years. He changed jobs and went to work for Xerox and stayed there till he retired. I believe he enjoyed the work and made many friends, some of whom I have met, at both jobs.
He retired fairly early and lived well with his wife, Sally, in Altadena ( a part of Pasadena in the L.A. area), California. They had a private walled backyard, dogs, avocado trees, and a variety of home improvement projects that Andy enjoyed and did well, though he always felt guilty about not doing more.
Fraternity Brother Emails
On the day Andy died I sent an email out to a group of brothers from the M.I.T. fraternity where I met Andy. There were a number of replies with some good memories of Andy. I collected them and have incuded them below. Andy graduated in 1963 with an SB in Mechanical Engineering. He was president of the fraternity, Theta Delta Chi, from 1962 to 1963.
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August 6, 2018
Andy Stokes, '63, died today, August 6th, 2018, in his home in Altadena, California. We were best friends.
I put a few memories and two pictures on this web page: http://boppers.net/andy/
He and I recorded a DJ radio show in the fall of 2017. Here is a link to that show:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/wombatsandmusic/350_wombats_music_oct_2_2017.mp3
Harry Baya ‘61
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This is certainly sad news, Harry. Thank you for sharing. It sounds as if you and Andy were wonderful friends over the years. I certainly do remember Andy.
Neil Lupton
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Dear Brothers,
So sorry to learn about Dan Chow and Andy Stokes.
We're getting to the age where we must Memento mori.
Since I was class of 63 I know Andy very well. We roomed
together briefly on Marlboro St. One very cold winter he
& I made a plan to hitchhike to Florida during winter break.
Neither of us could afford reliable travel. Glad we didn't try.
The last time I saw him was when I stayed with him & his
wife in Cal for 2 nights in 1966 or 67
In the bonds
-Robert Budney '63
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Thanks, Harry. I am very, very sorry to hear this. He was a good friend to many of us. When I last saw him sometime in '66, Regina and I were dating, and he called to tell me he was in town, and so he joined us for dinner at her apartment. He quizzed me at the time as to whether it was 'serious' and that inspired me to get off my ass and 'pop the question'. It was one of hose life-altering events for which I am forever grateful. It's very sad news.
Ralph Cuomo '60
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Hello
Oh so sorry to hear about Andrew Stokes. I had not heard that before. Andy was a great mentor to me and part of the "Brown" trio. For those who don't know the story, there was Andy, Terry Chatwin, and William Vachon in the class of '63. They were affectionately known as Willy Brown, Terry Brown, and Andy Brown. I don't know how that got started--perhaps another brother knows the story.
Willy Brown and Andy Brown were very instrumental in my pledging the class of '66. Andy was house president and a deep thinker about the bigger picture. I remember him fondly.
ITB
Gary '66
Garry Walker '66
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Andy was a great mentor to me ... i loved him dearly for his selfless willingness to step
in to help me deal with any problem. He championed me as "Theta Delta Dave" when
our class of '64 presidential election created a deadlock amongst the brothers...although i wasn't ready
for the task he guided me as i grew into it - that turned out to be a great learning
experience for me. God bless Andy Stokes!
David '64
David Fahrland
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Harry,
Thanks for sending this sad news. I didn't know Andy very well. He was TDC House president when I pledged in September '62. I'll never forget when he came out to the sidewalk in front of 314, as we frightened pledges were about to enter for Hell Week, and said "just take your cues from the Brothers and everything will be OK." That really helped us minimize the fears of what all might happen inside.
The attached pictures are great. I would never recognize you (or have recognized Andy) if you stood next to me somewhere and you probably wouldn't recognize me, either. That's what Walt Miller said to me when we met in his office at U.C. Medical Center around 2006 or 07. I hadn't seen him since 1966 but discovered he was a distinguished medical professor at UCSF ("who woulda thunk it?"). We were visiting our daughter Marielle then and she lived only a mile or two from UCSF (I could see it from her balcony) so I contacted Walt and we met up for a nice reunion.
I listened to your podcast with Andy and it seemed (to me at least) that he'd lost some of his drawl over the decades.
ITB,
--Dennis
Dennis Nagy '66
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Dennis, I think you are right about Andy's accent. I had not thought about it but I think 40+ years in California changed his accent. He lived in NJ till he was 9 or so. His father was a successful engineer and died young. His mother went home to Plainview, Texas. Adapting to West Texas and a pushy step-father on a farm was a big adjustment. He told me that he only applied to one college.
I remember that when he was president he had the remains of a smashed tennis racket on the wall over his desk and a neatly lettered sign under it saying "A Tribute to Good Sportsmanship".
He was a great host at Burning Man. We lived in his trailer with a camp of his friends.
Harry Baya '61
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Dennis,
The ethos of Burning Man (I had to learn what that word meant so that I could say this) is service to others. Nothing is sold and every camp makes an effort to contribute to the happiness and satisfaction of others. Strange world.
It was a very interesting experience and I especially enjoyed hanging out with Andy for a strange week. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have no lurid stories to tell.
Andy was in his element and radiated energy.
Harry Baya '61
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I had the good fortune to spend a lot of time with Andy in the late '60s. He was working at Computer Sciences and I was in grad school at UCLA. We sailed, played handball, and of course frisbeed. I recently sent him my memories of a party at his place -- a party for the ages!
Andy had a special trait which I associated with his rural West Texas upbringing: on any issue, he could cut through the crap and get right to the heart of the matter. He was a real individual in a world where this is increasingly difficult to do.
Sail on, brother!
Jim Kee '61
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Jim, Your description of Andy's "ability to get through the crap and get right to the heart of the matter" says very well what I was trying to say with "honest, direct and without pretense". In communicating with him I felt it especially important to do my best to do the same and enjoyed what that did to my thoughts.
Harry Baya '61
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Hi Folks:
As with others, I am so sorry to hear that Andy Stokes passed away. Andy came east for our MIT 50th anniversary reunion. One night we had dinner at Legal Seafood in Kendal Square. Afterwards, we walked back thru campus, just to relive some of the pain and fun we went thru together. We found room 26-100, the old physics lecture hall. It was open and we sat in about the 6th row where we had sat 53 years earlier. We were the only ones there and had to turn the lights on to find seats. We both recalled some of the pain of the first year and being exposed to physics.
Andy, Terry Chatwin and I ended up calling ourselves the "Brown Brothers" because all 3 of us had done quite poorly in the first quiz of the semester in Thermodynamics (sophomore year). We decided that our best bet to do well from there on was to start "brown nosing" this fairly obnoxious, British professor. We never figured out how to properly "brown nose", but we managed to get thru the course.
One fun situation often arose with Andy. While we walked down the "infinite corridor" between classes, quite often an attractive young lady (usually a secretary) would pass going the other way. Andy would call out..."twitch" and turn around and start following this person for a while. We'd laugh, then stop and watch. Andy would eventually get to class. What fun he was.
Andy had a very subtle and fun sense of humor. He was very smart, and (I felt) didn't study as much as others. He played bridge quite a bit, and I believe became quite good at it. I regret not seeing more of Andy over the years. He had a very unique upbringing in West Texas, where nobody had even heard of MIT. I could have learned more from Andy. He will be missed.
My best to all.
Bill (Willie Brown) Vachon '63
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I am surprised that no one has mentioned the legend of Andy at rush week. He was having a great time at AEPi, so much so that someone took him aside to explain that everyone there was Jewish. Stokes just looked at him and said "where I come from, everyone is either black or white."
More legends: Freddie Wan, '57 (?) the original Lord Rice Paddy Daddy, did not know how to swim, but it looked easy enough, so when asked if he could do the freshman swim test, said "sure" and promptly sank in 13 feet of water. In 4 years Freddie never did learn how to swim.
Danny Chow used to wow the freshmen talking about playing in the rice paddies on Taiwan. He did not tell them he was only on Taiwan because his father was in the U.S. Army and stationed there.
--Pete Angevine '64
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Dear Brethern,
I too was sad to hear of Andy’s death, which has come all too soon after Danny’s. Clearly we all feel and lament the passing of good friends - brothers who played such a crucial role in what was (for most of us) a transformative period of our lives. It is fascinating to see how many of us remember so much of people and events which occurred more than 50 years ago! it is also encouraging to realize how these feelings and memories are shared amongst us, as different and diverse as we are.
Thanks, Harry, for reminding me of Andy’s tennis racket; once you mentioned it, I could readily visualise it. And thanks, Peter, for a couple of other memory-stimulants. As to Andy’s comment “where I come from, everyone is either black or white”, that is a classic response readily recognizable by those of us raised in the South in the 40s and 50s. As I recall, there weren’t very many Southerners in TDC at that time; there was Andy of course, although really traditional Southerners wouldn’t allow that identity to folks from West Texas. And I do remember a few occasions of “hamming it up” with an exaggerated Southern accent together with Jim Kee, although Memphis and South Carolina (?) were rather different regional dialects. (Ironically, I now live in Scotland, which is further ‘north' than even upper New England.)
itb, Doug McCallum '64
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Sad news indeed about Dan and Andy. I knew Andy especially well as he followed me as President ( an easy act to follow some
would say). I had the good fortune to meet up with him about 5 years ago in Pasadena. He sure knew how to make creative use of early retirement. A special guy indeed.
ITB
John Lagraff '62
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Continuing Andy's story...
I went through Plainview on a cross-country trip in the summer of '62 and met Andy's mother. I met her again in the late '60s, in California. Andy and his wife took care of her in her final years.
Jim Kee '61
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Hi Harry:
Great stories about Andy. I spent a lot of time with Andy and those stories are quite consistent with how I recall his diligence at getting tasks done or learning a new talent. I am surprised that he didn't feel that he learned much at MIT. I can attest to the fact that he did.
Many thanks.
Bill Vachon '63
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Harry, your outpouring of material is priceless, and such a fine narrative. I am glad that you gave me an opportunity to consider so many facets of Andi and along with it your interaction. when I first saw you mention the boppers musical podcast, I whizzed right past it to see what else was in my email box. Then later went back and enjoyed “Andy’s Hour”. he even had selected one of my personal favorites the George Winston piano selection. That’s one that is guaranteed to give me a rush of gamma waves.
You didn’t say anything about children or grandchildren for Andy?
Andy and I had a curious "first date” at 314 Memorial. When I first came to the house, I probably hadn’t met more than 5-6 brothers on that first rush day, when somebody latched on to my comment that I was hoping that things would work out for me to play on MIT’s tennis team. some unknown brother tipped me that there already were a couple tennis/squash players in the house and I guess in an attempt to get this freshman rushed hooked, they told methat one of the brothers would gladly take time to go out to the courts (the close access was one of the selling points) for a friendly match. That sounded great to me , I can’t remember whether it was later that afternoon or the very next day, but I did have my racquet and gear back at the dorm and was able to show up at the house ready to play. It probably could have been either Andy or Terry Chatwin they both had played on the freshman team and were expecting to play on the varsity.
Spending 90 minutes with a tennis buddy is a great way to cut thru the awkward aspects of crazy Rush scene. Anyway that chance for me to be in my comfort zone went a long way toward my serious Theta Delt intentions. If the brothers had set me up with some Prep school guy I probably would have not returned. Stoksie as I sometimes called him was very authentic and fun. And the Brown bothers were right at the top of my list of my closest buddies. All 3 were intense competitors.
Marty big O
Marty Ormond '64
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Marty, Andy was married twice. His current marriage, to Sally, was for about 27 years I think. I met her around 1988. He had no children in either marriage. However, at one point he was in a relationship where he lived with a woman and her young daughter from a previous relationship. Things worked out that Andy helped raise her from then on they related as father and daughter. He gave her away at her wedding and remained close to her and her three children. In recent years he visited them in Alaska several time every year and flew them down for Christmas. Though he never formally adopted Christian, his "daughter", she was as much a part of his life as any daughter. I heard a lot about them and have pictures of the grandkids. They were a very important part of his life.
Harry Baya '61
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