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Neptunus Lex, Departing…

by Bryan Strawser · Mar 8, 2012

When the calendar rolled over from 2011 into 2012, I had hoped to have a better year in terms of losing friends. As the page turned to March and I passed my birthday on the 5th, I had just reflected on how well I felt the year had gone.

Last night, I landed back in Minneapolis from a short trip to San Diego. I was just a few miles from home and was stuck in a brief bit of traffic when I happened to open Google Reader, thumb over to the “Friends” section, and noticed a new post at Lex’s blog.

I saw that the post was from Whisper, an occasional guest poster, and I gave it just a very brief skim – then my heart stopped when I read the words below accompanied by a photo of the missing man formation.

When Lex “left the keys in it” for me to be a guest blogger here about a year ago, we didn’t discuss what to do in this occasion. I am at a loss. I did feel the need to provide one place for your tributes and condolences to collect.

I knew then that one of two things had happened – either my friend Carroll or his son, a Naval Aviator himself, had perished. Lex had retired from the Navy as a Captain a few years ago and had only recently returned to flying as a civilian contractor flying the F-21 as an adversary aircraft at TOPGUN.

I quickly learned that it was the Captain himself who had died in an aircraft crash at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada. I nearly drove off the road. I haven’t been right since.

Some perspective here is needed.

I began reading Neptunus Lex not long after he began blogging in 2003. If my memory serves me correctly, I learned about him from Lt. Smash, who sadly no longer blogs to my knowledge.

Over the years, we exchanged a number of e-mails and comments on each other’s blogs around a number of topics. We shared some interests in common – history, cycling, the Navy, technology, and blogging. He was one of the few bloggers that I read on a daily basis, and he rarely failed to entertaining or challenge my thinking with his prose.

Ironically, this week I was in San Diego for the first time in nearly a decade. I normally would have jumped at the chance to try to hoist a glass with Lex but knew that he was at Fallon during this week. I thought of him often as my hotel was just across from North Island where he used to serve when still on active duty.

I was sad that I wouldn’t get to connect with him on this trip – and figured that there would always be another time.

I should have learned when Mike passed away at age thirty eight in 2009 that you should count on there being another time. This is a lesson I’m afraid we’re all doomed to learn again and again in our lives.

There is a great tribute to Captain Carroll “Lex” Lefon, USN (Ret) by Chap over at the USNI Blog and an open thread on Neptunus Lex where you can leave a note for his family.

My heart breaks for his family.

Here are a few of my favorite writings from Lex:

  • Five Years In – a great moment of courage on the bridge
  • The Empty Chair – a tradition of remembering those that have gone before us
  • The Big Day – when Son Number One received his wings of gold
  • Ulysses – on his retirement from the Navy
  • The Elephant in the Room – on his daughter’s heroin addiction
  • On Faith – thoughts on religion

Update – I had forgotten a few that the group at the wake reminded me of last night:

  • Name Tags – what happens when a bunch of Naval Aviators all use the last name of their CO at an Air Force base?
  • Beliefs – as opposed to certainties
  • The Worst Day Ever – when Terry was killed
  • Signing the log book – obtaining immortality
  • I’ve met them – about DEVGRU or “Seal Team Six” as they used to be known
  • Five Years On – on the 5th anniversary of 9/11
  • Pay Off – remembering a jerk, thankfully
  • Lady Dying – When we lose a pet
  • We has a sad – how pets grieve
  • Old Ghosts – on humility and learning to be a leader

There are many others – such as his fabulous Rhythms series, about life on an Aircraft carrier.

His next to last post, Streamer, ended with these lines, which perhaps seems almost a premonition now:

It’s funny how quickly you can go from “comfort zone” to “wrestling snakes” in this business.

But even snake wrestling beats life in the cube, for me at least. In measured doses.

Last night, I hoisted a few fingers of Bushmills in his memory.. or as Lex would say: “For Strength”.

Fair winds & following seas, Captain. You will be missed.

Filed Under: Blogging, Deep Thoughts, Military

Chuck loses his son

by Bryan Strawser · Mar 22, 2009

Chuck Butcher’s son took his own life this week – he has blogged about it here, written not long after the police informed he and his wife:

I choose to let the bad stuff fade and to keep alive pictures like the 4 year old lugging his toy gun throught the woods trying to sneak and still keep up with Dad on an elk hunt and his pride in learning woods craft and ability to spot animals no human should be have been able to. Squatting in the back yard catching for him in fear of being broken if a pitch got away and his absolute laughing pleasure when I had to pull the glove off and rub a badly stung hand.

My thoughts are with Chuck and his family.

Filed Under: Blogging

Design Changes

by Bryan Strawser · Jan 19, 2009

I’ve not been happy with the design here for quite some time – I’ll be making some changes over the next week.

Don’t panic 😉

Filed Under: Blogging

RIP, Dean Barnett

by Bryan Strawser · Oct 29, 2008

In all my years, I’ll never understand why good men and women are taken from us just about when we need them the most. Dean Barnett was a Boston native and a fantastic writer – a conservative blogger at that. He passed away the other day from Cystic Fibrosis at the young age of 41.

I didn’t know of Dean’s blog when I was living in Boston, I had only heard him subbing for Hugh Hewitt on the radio in the last few years – after I moved to Minnesota.

James Lileks, who also appears on Hewitt’s show from time to time, penned this tribute:

You know what’s odd? I have no idea what he looked like. I have an idea, but it’s probably wrong. Again with the saccharine notion of the afterlife with the clouds and the wings and the harp: Dean walks up behind people and shouts “CHOWDAH,” and we know right away who it is. Whoever is standing there when we turn around, that’s him. The plucky smart kid with the fatal disease.

I’ve been hearing his voice in my head all night, frankly. Hard to forget. Why would you?

And his close friend, Hugh Hewitt, also writes:

Had he had more time, he would have been one of the great influences on the GOP for as long as he lived, probably because he valued and used every minute he had.

Dean told me early in our friendship that his disease had forced him to deal with the possibility of living too short a life and that he thus threw himself into everything. This ferocious desire to live well and fully is what I will always tell people marked Dean Barnett.

We all go, eventually… and some of us cross that river far too early in life. But not everyone takes the chance to really live..

Filed Under: Blogging, Massachusetts, Politics

Some design changes…

by Bryan Strawser · Oct 26, 2008

As you can tell, making several changes here to the overall look and feel of the blog.. I’m still not happy with where things are at — but if I’m going to live up to my promise and try to blog more often – and more transparently – I’m going to need to be happy with the look & feel of the blog.

Filed Under: Blogging, Design

Fair Winds and Following Seas

by Bryan Strawser · May 17, 2008

Lex moves on to terminal leave with a brief look behind – and a new career ahead.

Thanks for your service! And now, I’m waiting on the book…

Filed Under: Blogging, Military

Upgraded to WordPress 2.5

by Bryan Strawser · Mar 29, 2008

We’re now upgraded here to WordPress v2.5. Quite happy with it so far – but wow is the administrative interface pretty different than before.

I am loving the automatic plugin updates though.

Filed Under: Blogging

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