My True and Gentle Friend, Sandy Meschkow

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My old friend Sandy Meschkow died the other day. You probably didn't know him. But Sandy was a gentle soul, a kind man, and a good friend of mine for close to fifty years.

I cannot remember Sandy ever being angry about anything. Where other people would have felt anger, Sandy was amused. When he was working at the Franklin Institute, he taped up a picture of Gore Vidal, whose writing he admired, in his workspace and his boss suggested he take it down because he wouldn't want people to think he was "one of them." Sandy, who was as straight as they come, thought this was hilarious—not that somebody would think he was gay but that anybody would think that being gay was something to be ashamed of. The picture stayed.

Sandy was an engineer and eminently competent. One day his boss said, "Meschkow! You're writing a manual on aluminum welding." To which Sandy responded, "But... but... I don't know anything about aluminum welding." To which his boss responded, "Then learn." And, of course, as these stories go, Sandy learned and wrote and the manual became standard.

He was a passionate fan of science and a mainstay of Philadelphia’s science fiction community. He was also a major reason why the Institute became an employment haven for bright and overeducated but unskilled young fans. He and I worked together there at the National Solar Heating and Cooling Information Center. Sandy was a pay grade or five above me yet he never acted as if we weren't anything but peers. He believed in me as a writer back when I hadn’t published a single word of fiction. His support came when I needed it most.

Sandy outlived two wives—both marriages happy—and on retirement gradually faded from public life. It was typical of him that he would slip away quietly.

And now this kindly, generous man is gone. The world is diminished by his leaving it.

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