…I think of my brother Don. It is his birthday today.

An envisioner, inventor, doer, he was excellence in learning, taking action, getting things done. Moving on.

A few days after his passing in April, 2005, a wonderful friend walked a group of us on the land where Don had walked in his last hour when he beat the dawn on the first day of wild turkey hunting season back in Iowa. It was a journey from which he would not return, his body suddenly giving out long before anyone dreamed it would.

We who traveled there after him could see where Don had been just a few days before. He left his subtle, natural excellence, making things look easy even though there was much hard and thoughtful work in whatever he did.

That was Don.

In this case, the hunting blinds he created for shelter in the pre-dawn darkness were imbued with his standards, his handiwork, his pursuit of excellence, his thoughts.

He was of another time, in a way, a craftsman in a time of mass production, pop culture, going along. Quality was what he expected of himself. Nothing less. "OK" was not.

He embodied excellence in learning, and that's something I did not fully realize until he was gone. He did not realize, himself, how strong his process of mastery was. He'd had early difficulties in learning, perhaps because he was too young to start school at 4, with his late October birthday. Or perhaps because people tried to force him into the right-for-the masses learning production process that didn't work for Don, an experiential learner. Even with the engineering PhD and two masters degrees he earned, he did not know how very intelligent he was.

He learned to use information, not just to gather and possess it. When picking a new subject, setting a learning goal, he sought experts in the field, wherever they were, whoever they were. Title mattered not to Don. His questions, in seeking resources for learning centered around whether the person knew their "stuff," and had they proven it through action, and results. Both process and results mattered – a lot.

He cared about the environment before the environment was "hot" (no pun intended). If too much of a crowd showed up where he had been, he moved on. He was actively NOT interested in large group attention, or large groups of people affirming what mattered to him. He knew what counted in his world, and what did not.

He was a man of little waste, little haste. Deep in thought, deep in an idea, Don would tinker, invent, try, simplify, perfect.

A quiet presence, a Renaissance man, he had true friends from many walks of life. A peer to all, he was also a leader by action, not words. Whether he said it or not, Don's unspoken example was, "If you think something is not right, what are you going to do about it? Because you must do. Don't just talk."

My big, sometimes imposing, sometimes intimidating, always-trying-to-hide-a-soft-heart older brother, was a wonderful man, whether he realized it or not. He might have laughed at that statement, gruffly, but he was.

When we were younger, I didn't know him all that well. A high school man while I was still a girl, he seemed a world away in time and thought when we were growing up.

But as an adult, our two families traveled together several times. One time on a business trip to California, he stayed with us for a weekend. We sat up late and talked for hours under the night sky in our backyard. After that trip, in particular, when we'd had a long time to talk and find out how important the same things were to both of us, I remember thinking, "What an interesting, wonderful man! I am SO lucky to know him, to be related to him, to have him in my life! I wish I'd known him like this earlier in life – but we have now, and we have the future."

When I think of him today, I think of his smile, his laugh, his full-of-life eyes, a little boy quality he never lost. He was fully engaged in his life. 

His was an irrepressible spirit of adventure, discovery, a love of nature – the whole of it. A hunter in the world in which we grew up in the Midwest where there was much rustic, spare, open ground, he was a conservationist, as well. He knew the cycle of life, the balance of nature and how delicate it was, and how many different forces worked together to make it all work.

I miss Don, a lot. He was the family oak tree. He didn't know that about himself, I guess – how very much he meant to others. My mother, also since gone, knew how much she was dearly loved.

I hope Don knows now. I think he does.