My dear cousin Alex died peacefully yesterday in Boston. He was the eldest son of Vladimir, my father's brother.
Alex achieved extraordinary success, starting from a little workshop in Boston with his friend Nick DeWolf and gradually created the famed electronics company Teradyne. This is not the side of Alex that I know best because Vladimir and Katia, his father and mother, brought up their children mainly in America whereas my family was the more nomadic branch of the d'Arbeloffs and our lives went in very different directions.
What I cherished most about Alex was his wonderful personality, his humour, his ceaseless energy and innovative, rebellious spirit, his amazing generosity and family loyalty. I am grateful to him for so many things and fondly remember him in childhood, when he and his brother Dimitri and my sister and I played together and fought together in Paris and Rio de Janeiro and Paraguay and Los Angeles. Our shared memories of those days came up whenever we got together in recent times and gave us a sense of belonging to a private world far removed from our everyday lives. I saw him again in September last year when I spent a weekend with him and his wife Brit at their home. He was still playing tennis and doing his morning exercises on the floor.
Daragoya Alex, gospodi pomiluy. Wherever you are, I'm sure you are giving flying lessons to the angels.
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