Hello everybody. I am Tom Pirko, Rick's brother. I would like to thank all of Rick's friends for the wishes and condolences that you have extended to our family in this difficult time. It is much appreciated.
Welcome to the YSU Planetarium. For those of you who knew Rick from the flying clubs or non-work-related relationships, this facility was built soon after Youngstown became a state university.
For us young people caught up in the excitement of the early manned space program, the planetarium programs here were perfect for expanding our understanding of the cosmos. My brothers and I were very fortunate that our parents would take us to the weekend planetarium programs at this facility. Needless to say, the planetarium really caught Rick's imagination when he was attending this school. He eventually became the planetarium producer, which was the perfect job for him to apply his electrical, optical, and photographic skills and also to share with the world his understanding of astronomy.
At this time I would like to introduce my family members. Rick's mother Phyllis is here as are two of Rick's younger brothers, James and Charles. My brother Michael could not attend.
For the longest time, Rick had been my family's handy-man on call. He had these electrical talents and innate mechanical skills that meant that he could fix anything that broke at my parents' house. He made time for them, too, so that my parents did not have to do without. I think that Rick felt that even though he had grown up and moved away, he was still coupled to that home with our garden and our trees and the house that my father built.
When Rick was eleven years old, my father began construction on a new home on the lot next door to my parents' house. Since he was an electrician at the steel mill, my father did his own wiring. My brothers Mike and Rick were old enough to help with the wiring, so they got to drill studs and fish wires and terminate circuits at the switch boxes. My father recounted to me how young Rick would ably climb up the unfinished walls and fish a piece of Romex through all of the drilled holes while climbing in and out of the overhanging ceiling joists.
I remember Rick telling me that when he grew up, he thought that every kid had a dad who taught them how to wire light switches and receptacles.
When I grew up, Rick was my role model. Both of my oldest brothers were Eagle Scouts in the Boy Scout program. Rick was so absorbed in the program that he became a camp counselor, which meant that he spent the whole summer at Camp Chicagami during which time scout troops from the area camped out for one week visits. As camp counselor, Rick was responsible for teaching all the young scouts about tree identification, how to tie knots, how to paddle a canoe and all of those fun activities that scouting emphases. What boy does not want to learn how to sharpen a knife or build a fire?
My parents were very dedicated to the Scouting program and did a lot of adult leadership work. They used to take me to the campfire ceremonies at scout camp on parents' night when the scouts did skits and held solemn awards ceremonies and Native American rituals. I was eight years younger than Rick, and I was totally transfixed as I sat there in the back rows thinking to myself: "that's what I want to do when I get older". And I did. Years later, when it was my turn, I joined Troop 31 and went up through the ranks and became an Eagle Scout, too. Those outdoor activities are still my hobbies and when I go hiking or watching wildlife, I still feel like I am still following Rick.
Decades later, I do volunteer activist work with the Sierra Club. I am still promoting the ideas that I learned in Boy Scouts like conservation of natural resources and brotherhood.
My brother and I talked a lot about current events and issues when we got together. We both felt a lot of frustration with the way things that we cared about were being destroyed or turned into political issues for cheap political gain. Rick dealt with it by doing a little political activism on his own. For the last several years, he has been writing letters to the campus newspaper, the Jambar. He was not afraid to express an opinion that was contrary to the messages that were promoted as orthodoxy by our political leaders or by our weak-willed press.
When I started writing this presentation, I had planned to recite one of Rick's letters to the Jambar. They are kind of long and a bit dated. However, I urge you go to thejambar.com and read them. [ you may read a couple of Rick's Letters to The Editor of YSU’s The Jambar 2/10/05 here 2/14/06 Letter here ]
Instead of a letter, I would like to finish with some verse that someone emailed to me five and half years ago during a woeful time for us in the peace movement. It was written twenty-some years ago by Wendell Berry and is called The Peace of Wild Things:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from Collected Poems, 1957-1982
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