The unthinkable

I earned my Ph.D. in Statistics in 1986 at Southern Methodist University under the mentorship of Randy Eubank, and we have remained friends through the more than thirty years since. Randy and his wife Lisa moved to Hawaii a few years back so we do not get to see them often. Randy has taken up scuba diving over these past years and as recently as early Sunday morning had sent a new batch of beautiful pictures from his most recent dive.

On Monday morning, I saw the following e-mail message which had appeared in my inbox late Sunday night:

Hi Rebecca,

This is Ana, Randy’s and Lisa’s friend. We met at your dive shop. 
I love Lisa and I’m very worried about Randy. 
If you see anything that one can do to help him please let me know. Dennis Young is coming on Tuesday

This note was a bit puzzling, and I later correctly determined that Ana had sent it to the wrong “Rebecca,” as Randy has a dive partner who shares my name. I figured I would wait until later that day, since Hawaii is six hours behind the east coast, and give Randy and Lisa a call. But Randy called me early that afternoon, and I knew the second I heard his voice that something was terribly wrong.

The unthinkable happened while they were out for a drive on Sunday morning, a horrible accident in which their car flipped over and Lisa was killed. I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around this. It just does not seem real.

If I wanted to sum up Lisa in just a few words, I would say that she was an amazingly warm and positive person, someone you felt you had known forever even after having just met her.

Dennis Young, who Ana mentions above, is a good friend of Randy’s, a statistician who spent much of his career at Arizona State University and now holds the title of Professor Emeritus there.  We had never had the pleasure of meeting, but as fellow friends of Randy our names were familiar to each other. It just happened that Dennis and his wife had planned to visit Randy and Lisa this week, and they flew there today. If only I were up to making that trip I surely would.

What more can I say?

Love,

Rebecca