But I pity the people who never saw the way his smile lit up a room even more. More than anything else, De Remer the sports fiend was about joy. Scary joy, perhaps—I can remember being accosted by Dave at the Crimson one night as he revealed, with the exultant urgency of the Archangel Gabriel, some quirk in the field hockey NCAA selection criteria that no one had ever noticed. Scary joy, sometimes, but always joy. The reporting feats were superhuman. The smile was simply super... human. Long live Dave.
Rahul Rohatgi may have been the single most likeable person in the Harvard sports universe. The Crimson, Lavietes Pavilion and the football press box were like home to him, and everyone was family. He was just as comfortable making a freshman feel good about having shown up to a meeting as he was saddling up to do WHRB halftime shows. Every team needs someone who keeps the disparate personalities one. Rahul—a people person for the ages—was ours, and a damn good writer to boot.
The inimitable Tim Jackson, who is sticking around (we have redshirts, too), has made me grin wider than all but a handful of people outside of the Bell family, even as his penchant for getting hurt has made me cringe.
Dan Fernandez and Eli Alper wrote controversial columns that some people may remember years from now—about the football team’s placekickers and the band, respectively. I’ll forget the columns in six months. I’ll remember the way Dan’s wit oscillated between the maddening and the endearing, and the time I trudged out to a rainy Harvard Stadium to watch him face much-maligned Harvard kicker Anders Blewett in a ludicrous placekicking contest. I’ll remember Eli kicking it Alper-style at a party in New Jersey, and how the dance floor was never the same. And I’d remember them for you more right now, and tack on a word about the other people who made this time beautiful, the Lande Spottswoods and Jessica Lees and Jonelle Lonergans and Daniel Mostellers, except the homily is ongoing and time is short, and I wanna be quiet so I can bear witness to the Gospel of Joe, so the words can stay with me…
“Those are the best memories of your schooling—making friends, meeting kids, representing your school,” the good man in baseball continued. “There’ll be plenty of time to be pushing pencils in concrete caves.”
The caves beckon. I only hope they’re well lit enough for us to read this yellowed clipping when we feel like looking back, when we want to remember that we did this with these guys.