Delivered at services on October 22, 2010 by long-time family friend Larry Hawthorne
We honor the life of Daniel Jezek, who departed this earth September 24, 2010. A life cut tragically short; a potential with so much more to be realized. We mourn the loss of a loving son, a young man who even in his short time with us, gave much and had so much more to give.
Dan’s book of his life had too few pages, 33 to be exact. But those pages were filled with love, compassion, giving, and a lot of accomplishment.
Daniel was born June 25, 1977, in Prague, in what was then Communist Czechoslovakia. He was the only child and son of two very accomplished parents. His father, who still teaches at Charles University in Prague is a world-famous mathematician, who by the age of 25 had already solved a centuries-old mathematical hypotheses that no one else could solve. That’s a little like already knowing the answer empirically, but not knowing how to get there mathematically.
Dan’s father did it when no one else could. His mother held a PhD in law from Charles University in Prague and was an intellectual figure in her own right. (I might add that his father is very ill right now and we wish him well.)
With that parentage was it any wonder then that Dan was absolutely brilliant? And he demonstrated that mental acuity early.
At the age of three he was introduced to LEGO. LEGO bricks are those little plastic bricks that children – and plenty of grownups – use to build practically everything, limited only by their own imagination. If you were trying to find a world-wide movement, certainly love of all things LEGO would be among them. As an infant Dan began piecing together LEGO works of art.
Brief escapes from behind the Iron Curtain while Dan was growing up were made possible by his father’s visiting professorships at universities in the West. Summer teaching assignments in West Germany, Canada, Berkeley in California, Vanderbilt in Nashville, the University of South Carolina, and, of course, the University of Hawaii.
On one of those summer escapes, the family bought a computer. One of the very first personal computers ever made. It was a leading edge with a clunky keyboard and a monochrome monitor. Few had ever even seen one behind the Iron Curtain.
It was manna from heaven for Dan. Playing with his father’s primitive computer at the age of nine, he finally found something he loved as much as his LEGO. It wasn’t long before he learned to program that computer and to build, quite naturally, a computer game.
Thus was this meld of an inquisitive mind, with a love for LEGO who was literally a virtuoso with a computer in his hands."
Thank you, Daniel!