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Neptunus Lex, Departing…

March 8, 2012 by Bryan Strawser

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.

Chuck loses his son

March 22, 2009 by Bryan Strawser

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.

Design Changes

January 19, 2009 by Bryan Strawser

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 😉

RIP, Dean Barnett

October 29, 2008 by Bryan Strawser

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..

Some design changes…

October 26, 2008 by Bryan Strawser

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.

Fair Winds and Following Seas

May 17, 2008 by Bryan Strawser

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…

Upgraded to WordPress 2.5

March 29, 2008 by Bryan Strawser

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.

Farewell, Brainhell

February 3, 2008 by Bryan Strawser

Seems wrong that two of my recent blog posts have been about folks in the blogosphere that have passed on – but sometimes that’s the lot of life.

Last night, Brainhell, a blogger in California, passed away at home from complications related to ALS.

I first read his blog back in November or so when I was googling for something else. He had been diagnosed with ALS nearly four years prior to when I had started reading his blog – and he had been blogging about his medical issues even prior to that.

His blog as always honest, entirely authentic, and sometimes difficult to read. But he provided an open and candid view into a horrible disease – and did so with courage. His final words, according to his sister, were “It was fun….”

I’ll miss him.

The Redesign

August 25, 2007 by Bryan Strawser

I’ve never been happy with the design of this blog – until now.

For the first five years of this blog, I was using Movable Type as the blog software that powered bryanstrawser.com. Once upon a time, I coded a custom template but it was so standards non-compliant it wasn’t even funny. A later attempt to hire a professional designer yielded a design that I was really less than fond of. So it was back to templates for me.

After leaving the blog world for over a year, I relaunched on Memorial Day 2007 using Automattic’s WordPress. I wound up rotating through some different templates before giving up and contacting my good friend Matt Craven to get a design put together on the blog.

Matt, being as smart as he is, turned to Chris Jennings, an up-and-coming designer that had worked on blogs like Tim Ferris, the author of The Four Hour Work Week, along with many others.

The result is this uber-cool design that you see before you.

The Picture

The picture of me in the header is from my vacation to Bar Harbor, Maine in October 2003. It’s one of my favorite pictures of myself. The picture was taken on the eastern coast of Bar Harbor early on an October morning as the fog was just beginning to burn off… I wrote more about that vacation here, here, and here.

The Quote

For a very long time, Richard Bach has been one of my favorite authors. Two friends of mine from high school gave me the book Illusions in my junior year.. and it had a profound impact on me. The book has remained one of my favorites ever since…

The quote is but one of the sayings from The Master’s Handbook that Bach’s character is given in the book..

The Design

Through Matt, I gave Chris little guidance other than some links to blog designs that I liked alot.. the credit for the creativity, inspiration, and end result is entirely due to his abilities as a designer. I couldn’t be h

Chris also made a slick archives page that is fairly unique in it’s layout and architecture.

For the first time, I wrote a solid About Page – one that I’m pleased with for the time being anyways.

As my career has grown, I’ve also been fortunate enough to be able to speak at some various conferences and the like – where permitted, links to those are on the new presentations page.

Final Thoughts

All said, I’m very happy with this design. I finally feel like the blog has been brought forward to today’s technology with WordPress and with a design that pops… I’m looking forward to blogging on a more regular basis!

4 Year Blogoversary

January 14, 2006 by Bryan Strawser

4 years

2440 posts

539 comments

104 trackbacks

Been a fun ride so far.

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