Rich Lopez died today after an eleven-year bout with cancer. He was one of the greatest men I have known. He was a long-time model aviation leader, combat competitor and magazine columnist. He would come to my house every year for the Bladder Grabber. We started each day with ritual music: first I'm Bad Like Jesse James by John Lee Hooker, then some gospel, then Sympathy for the Devil. He would quote John Lee throughout the weekend, particularly before his matches.
Rich made a great contribution to the world in his professional life. He organized and taught in inner-city Los Angeles schools. His last job was principal of the third-largest grade school in LA (it had 18 kindergarten classes!). He was bilingual in English and Spanish, and he learned other languages so he could talk to other immigrant kids. During our combat matches he delighted in cussing me in Tagalog and Gaelic.
Rich was the US team manager at the 2008 world championships. When one of our team flew, Rich would stand by the circle waving an American flag. When a Californian flew, he would wave a California flag in the other hand. I was his assistant, which was easy, because Rich did all the work. I had to invent jobs to do before he thought of them and did them himself. He went to all the control line world championships for the last several cycles in various capacities. He was on the US combat team in 1990. Last year he was a pit crew for the New Zealand combat team. For the opening ceremony he wore the New Zealand uniform and marched with their team and lent his American flag to our team.
Although his illness finally got him, it had a hard time doing so. He had surgery to remove most of his tongue and throat the week after he ran an F2D Fast contest for world champs contestants after the 2004 Muncie contest. He drove himself to radiation therapy, relearned how to eat and talk, then went back to work and flying combat. He rode his bicycle 30 miles a day. He flew every weekend at Whittier Narrows and recently went to a contest in Europe. He intended to go to the 2016 world champs in Australia, but declined to volunteer as team manager. I guess he suspected he wouldn't be able to go.
Topic: Richard Lopez (Read 1830 times)
