Denise L Goslee (Abernethy)

I remember when I joined the Des Plaines Yacht Club (DPYC) at Lake Park. Eric was always playing frisbee if he wasn't sailing, with John Boskay (sp), John Washburn, and Bob DiLeonardi. I was so shocked to hear about him in the past couple of years, and find it hard to believe he is not with us anymore.

Blessings to his family,

Denise Goslee Abernethy

Robert Di Leonardi

I can not provide an official obituary, but I can share that Eric's life before and after high school, like Eric himself, was rarely dull. 

Eric and I were best friends as little kids.  We met, through our mothers, at age 4 and even at that age he was smart as whip and had a wicked sense of humor.  He was the only pre-kindergarten kid I've known, before or since, that was able to use dry humor and sarcasm so skillfully that even the sternest adult would usually laugh.  I loved to make people laugh, too, so in elementary school we were a hysterical comedy duo (our view) and incredibly disruptive class clowns (teachers' view).  By the time we reached junior high, there were notes in our files that we were never to be assigned to the same class again.

Despite never being in the same classes again, we maintained our friendship, and, as Denise kindly notes in another comment on this page, spent a lot of our high school years sailing and hanging out at Lake Opeka.  

Eric's academic efforts tended to wax and wane depending on his interest, but he remained standout-smart his entire life, able to ace almost any kind of test or mental challenge when the mood struck him.  Near the end of his time at Maine West, he received a near-full scholarship to MIT.  For family reasons, however, he was unable to take advantage of it and instead attended U of I.  I went to a small college in Wisconsin, but we saw each other every summer, and enjoyed doing  a lot of the very fun and stupid things college kids tend to do.

After college I lost touch with him for a few years, as I had a very demanding job then entered law school.  Halfway through law school (I never did get my JD) I got deathly ill with a very rare autoimmune disease that, despite lots of time with docs at everywhere from the Mayo Clinic to Harvard Medical School, kept trying to kill me.  I wasted down to 100 lbs. and regularly had ugly rashes and high fevers.  Nothing at all about my illness was contagious but nonetheless many of my friends treated me like Typhoid Mary.  

Eric was different.  As soon as he heard about my situation he made a point of staying in touch, and when I was (sort of) well enough to travel, invited me to visit him in San Francisco.  He was an amazing host and I went out there two or three times.  On one of my visits in the early 1980s, he told me about a particular mutual fund and would not rest until I'd put almost all of my savings into it.  With no formal investment training he'd determined that it was a safe investment with strong potential.  He was right, and in a few years time I doubled my money--critical to me at a time when I was disabled and without adequate health insurance.  I kept that account open for years, and it ultimately provided the seed money for the college accounts my wife and I opened for our kids.  I wish very much that Eric was still around so I could thank him again for that insistent investment advice--and lots more.

At the time of his death in 1996 (by an opportunistic infection and/or flu, he was alone at home at the time) he was still living in San Francisco, doing freelance IT security consulting for a major west coast bank. He probably could have done almost any job, but he told me he liked the flexibility and intellectual challenge.

Sorry for such a very long post, but Eric's parents have passed away and his siblings are many years older and live out of state.  Eric was a truly unique person, and it was important to me that somebody else know that, too.