Sweating with long-hair and characteristic Salem menthol cigarette dangling from his lips, Don entered my world in September 1971—a sweltering hot first day in the Pratt Institute Brooklyn dorm. I recall his parents had dropped him off at the front door and took off—I guess before he could change his mind. We connected as friends immediately—a strong friendship that has lasted over forty years. The friendship I had with Don was such that even if we did not talk to each other for many months, or did not see each other for years, we could instantly pick up where we left off—laughing and enjoying each other’s company and conversation. So what do I know about Don? Many of you have been closer to him over the years; many of you have spent more hours working with him than I have; but there are few in this church, aside from his wonderful wife Kathy and his siblings, who has known him as long as I have. I even knew him a few days more than my wife Beth, who was also an architecture student at Pratt, and another roommate Larry Schott, who is also here today. And I present this eulogy based on that long association and ask forgiveness for the details that I leave out or may not even remember. As the memorial web page and handout put together by his daughter Amanda stated, Don was a devoted husband, loving father, caring friend, mentor and teacher. And to add to that, he was humorous, intelligent, generous, moral, calming even while being contrarian, and sometimes, as Kathy and I recently discussed, obtuse. DON WAS DEVOTED AND LOVING I saw the devotion and love he had for his family, starting in college when returning one fall semester he told me about his summer with Kathy and about taking her and Aaron under his caring wing. I was lucky to visit him often enough to see Aaron and Amanda grow up with his love and pride. I still remember the far few but entertaining events our two young families shared. I know there were some rough patches in the marriage, but what relationship does not have difficult times? The miracle was the reconciliation and rekindling of that relationship, that he and Kathy were able to again share their love before his life too soon ended. Kathy spoke to me about the wedding ring he bought to replace the original that no longer fit his finger, and how she has nestled his old ring next to hers on her finger as a reminder of their bond. DON LOVED HIS CAREER Don also loved his career. He was all architecture from day one at Pratt. My architect wife Beth, he, and I all suffered due to an economic recession when we graduated (and maybe that should have been a hint about the volatility of the profession). But slowly we obtained jobs in architecture. I remember Don excitedly calling me from his first real architect job in Bruce Blackburn’s office in Orlando (he always called him Mr. Blackburn) rhetorically questioning “isn’t the greatest career or what---I love it.” His career built from there, and he worked at many name firms in the Orlando area and on some impressive projects, such as the Orlando Convention Center and the Sea World Shamu facility, as well as those mentioned by Father earlier. He eventually rose to the position of head of architecture in Interplan’s Atlanta office before becoming victim to the current recession. But he was able to rise again and was involved as a partner in a new and growing firm before cancer took its toll. Many of you may not know it, but Don was responsible for every architecture career move I have made since I graduated. In 1976 Don gave me a lead on an interior space planner job with Prudential in NJ. Don had been invited by Pru to interview for the job, but even though he was as desperate as I was to get a job closer to architecture he graciously referred them to me. I got the job, and the contacts I made there led to my own architecture partnership in NJ, my switch to forensic architecture, and my eventual move to Florida. I used to kid Don that he was not only responsible for my business triumphs but also my business failures over the years, and he had to atone for it. He shrugged it off, maybe not realizing how much I had appreciated him for it. DON WAS COOL UNDER STRESS The Don I knew was cool under stress. One night we were held up at gunpoint while on our way to share a pitcher of beer at the local student pub. The six teenagers with the gun were probably more nervous than us, which increased the risk of that gun being fired from the shaking hands of the young robber. They were yelling at me to drop my hands which I had up in the air, TV Western robbery style. I refused, so Don calmly said to me, “Drop your hands you idiot, they don’t want you drawing any attention!” Thanks Don for saving my life, although we did lose $3, your cheap broken watch, and never did get that pitcher of beer. DON WAS A GOOD FRIEND AND ROOMMATE Don and I were apparently so inseparable on campus that my future wife Beth thought we were an item. The truth was that Don was a good cook, which is a good enough basis as any for a relationship Don showed up our second year with a cookbook written for students and declared we were no longer going to eat the bland food that our mother’s made for us growing up. We had many a good meal, although the most interesting one was the meatloaf our third roommate Pete had clandestinely stuffed with malted milk balls while it was cooking. Pete hated meatloaf and this was his revenge. He laughed maniacally as Don and I cluelessly puzzled over the sweet slightly crunchy/gooey bits embedded in the ground beef—Don wondering what had happened to his recipe. Don was such a good friend and roommate that he agreed to rent an apartment with me that was a number of dangerous blocks away from the architecture school rather than a nicer one that was almost next door. The problem was I could not come up with the extra $12.50 a month for the closer place. So we ended up in a basement apartment that turned out to have little heat in the winter, had no door to the public stairway, contained the building’s communal washer and dryer in our kitchen, and was adjacent to a liquor store that was the scene of many fights and shootings. We even awoke one morning to have a chalk body outline on our sidewalk. We would take turns placing our drafting boards in the kitchen so we could open the oven door and place our frozen feet into it. It worked as long as we kept the socks out of the meatloaf. But Don did not complain, continued to cook, and enjoyed the notoriety of being adopted as the block’s token minority. We loved the people on our block, the other crazy tenants in our brownstone, and even our landlady, Geneva. She may have been too slow to pay those utility bills, but as a part time chef would bring us great food from her catering work. But as I said, it was cold in the winter and without privacy (and I think Kathy and Beth can attest to that from their visits). Don had other Pratt roommates over the years, including Larry Schott, who is here today, and Mark O’Leary, both of who remained friends over the years. We four used to joke about us all being either altar boys or choir boys while growing up. Mark O’Leary posted the following message to his family on the memorial page : I'm sorry I won't be with you in Orlando tomorrow, but I'll be thinking about you and Don as I have every day for the past few months. I'm glad to have known Don, and will always have good memories of him - at Pratt and in Italy. He was a great guy (although sometimes contrary and argumentative! A great debater!) - and despite the distance - a lifelong friend. Mark DON COULD BE OBTUSE I mentioned Don could be obtuse. Kathy and I laughed earlier this week retelling a couple of stories of how obtuse he could be. Beth can remember one as well. Don and I were visiting her at her apartment; we were all just college friends at that point. As the evening wore on, Beth and I began to realize we were more than just friends. Don, getting bored, said lets go home. It was late and he did not want to take the long walk alone through some dangerous neighborhoods. He went downstairs and then proceeded to yell up to me it was time to go. I kept begging off, but he persisted, apparently unaware he was interrupting the tentative blooming of love. I finally relented and headed home, setting back the eventual relationship with my future wife by several months. When I brought this up years later he seemed to have no recollection of it—as I said, obtuse!! DON WAS CARING I saw the caring Don had for people and the environment. His was a high moral and ethical grounding, firmly pronounced by him, but not preachy or lording. He may have kept his religion quiet, but that did not hide his caring nature. Nor, as Kathy has reminded me, did he allow the demands of business compromise his ethics. In my NJ years as an elected Republican official I would call him and often good naturedly kid him on his liberal leanings, but we were both humanists with the same end goal in mind. And during those long distance calls he would often tell me that he worried that all was ok for Beth, me, and our family. I remember taking a long swim off Cocoa Beach while Don paced up and down along the beach. When I came in and asked him why the pacing, his answer was he worried about me. That was Don’s caring nature.   DON WAS WELL KNOWN Not only is Don well known by those who spent lots of time with him, but he is also well known by people he has met in passing or never met him at all. Loretta, Beth’s matron of honor, still laughs when she recalls Don telling her and her husband he only needed a pile of cedar shavings in the corner to sleep on in their apartment the night of our wedding rehearsal. My Orlando business associate David Odom, who never met Don, called him Mr. Bucca di Beppo, in reference to his design work for that chain of Italian restaurants. These people, some on the far periphery of his life----David, Loretta, my mother, my family, and my high school buddies---have all sent their condolences. An example from my high school friend Bob: Really sorry to hear to hear about Don, Rick. I know you guys go back a long way and were very close. The few times I spent time with him were always fun and the world will be a lesser place without him. My condolences to his family and you. And from my friend Dave MacPhaul: Hey Rick, sorry to hear about Don, though I never met him I did hear you speak highly of him often. It seems like his last few years were kind of a tough time. I hope his last months were relatively comfortable, or at least as much as they can be under the circumstances. DON LIVED A SIMPLE LIFE Unlike me, Don lived a simple life, not accumulating useless materials and possessions. His one souvenir after a college semester in Italy was a slick Italian designed lighter. But my inclination is to hoard the little mementos of life. Just last year I came across a map Don had drawn in 1972 showing the route to his parent’s house in Keene. It was officially meant to provide directions to me and our other roommate Pete for a Winter break visit. However Don had satirized Keene on the map as a bucolic land of farmers and swimming holes and general stores. Last summer I scanned the map and emailed it to Don. His reply was: “GOODNESS MAN, DO YOU EVER THROW OUT ANYTHING? Archeologists must follow you around and ask to go through your pockets, hoping for some signs of ancient civilization. And when The Collected Notes of Richard Scott are published, it will be thousands of pages long, but still fit on the corner of a piece of notebook paper” No Don, my good friend, no--- I promise you I don’t throw away memories, and I will always hang on with great love and care to your memory. I know our bantering self-deprecating relationship never allowed for me to say it in life, but I loved you, loved you like a brother. Rest in Peace my dear dear friend. Rick Scott July 27, 2013