Last week I lost a friend of forty years.
Steve Auerweck died Friday at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, where he was being treated for pneumonia. He had been in seriously deteriorating health for more than a year.
It was in the fall of 1986 that I began work at The Baltimore Sun and met Steve. He too had been a copy editor before The Sun, recognizing his expertise with computers as well as with language, made him systems editor.
Typically as a former copy editor, he was literate, widely read, and smart. He was also wickedly funny, with the kind of mordant sense of humor common in the craft. One example: He suggested one day that the OBITUARIES logo on the paper's obits page might more truthfully be changed to SUBSCRIBER COUNTDOWN.
We were both laid off, with sixty others, in The Sun's Great Purge of 2009. Because Steve had shrewdly invested in Apple at the very beginning and lived thriftily, he had no need to seek work. So he stayed home and proceeded to read voraciously, cook Chinese food, and look after his beloved cats. He recently acquired Deutsche Grammophon's 222-CD boxed set of the works of Bach and was working his way through it.
A few years ago, after the death of his wife, he joined our little day-drinking group that meets at 3:00 p.m. (the new five o'clock) several days a week at Zen West in Belvedere Square for beverages (some of them non-alcoholic) and conversation: books, politics, local lore, cooking, and the events of our lives. One member posted that "he was such a gentle man & loved being included in the group."
Steve was given to making lovely, garlicky pickles, and he gave a jar of them to a member of our coterie for Christmas. She plans to bring them to the bar to share, along with our memories of him.
We are not provided with enough smart, funny, humane people whose company over a friendly glass is welcomed and prized. And today we have one fewer.
