Losing A Friend

This past week we lost a friend. He was a member of former GABAs and had always encouraged the YABA leadership to move up, because eventually it would be these YABAs that would be the leaders in the church. Not to long ago, after an unusual day for him while preparing for Obon, he undergone some tests and was later diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's disease."

What it is it? From the ALS - Greater LA Chapter website, it is "a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually lead to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed."

A year later his family and friends supported him in the annual ALS-Los Angeles fundraiser, Walk to D'Feet. It had been a 4 mile walk around Santa Monica, last year it became a 2.3 mile walk around the USC campus, sponsored by the Phi Delta Theta, the same fraternity that Lou Gehrig was a part of at Columbia University. Every year, members from our temple, supported by the ABA, had also joined the walk.

This year the walk will take place again on the USC campus on Sunday, October 7. Info is at http://walkgla.alsa.org/site/TR?pg=entry&fr_id=2770.

In many ways, the merging of the GABA and the YABAs was probably a Dan Shikuma idea. So a few years later, here they are, one group, and still encouraging the next generation of church leaders. If anything, Dan left us a legacy to laugh and have fun. It is not work, if we are having fun. In the last few years, ALS had gotten the best of him, and he had not been around much but even then his spirit still outshined us all. We have been missing him, but we've been ready for that. The funeral service is set for Friday at 10:00 am.

Gassho.