Deceased September 5, 1999

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In Memory

During the wee hours of the morning on September 5, 1999, Ed Strach died in his sleep at his home in St. Joseph, Michigan. He succumbed to the effects of Shy-Drager Syndrome, a rare degenerative neurological disease that he had suffered with for three years. Born on April 23, 1954, to John Strach Sr. and Irene Strach, as the third of what was to be five boys, Ed graduated from Muskegon (Mich.) High School. After three years at Amherst, he left to attend the University of Michigan Dental School from which he graduated in 1979. After completing a residency at the Olin Teague Medical Center in Temple, Texas, he returned to Michigan to practice dentistry. He took over the practice of a retiring dentist and, in that location, practiced excellent dentistry for 18 years before being forced to retire by his illness.

I met Ed in the wrestling room freshman year, and within a short period of time, he had injured my elbow. Ed was a responsible guy, someone who will always try to do the right thing and always take complete responsibility for his actions. So for the next two weeks, he came to my room every night to see how I was healing and wanting to know if he could help me in any way. By the time my arm came out of the sling and I returned to the mat, I had a lifelong friend, a roommate for junior year, a future colleague in dentistry. Ed never wrestled again but found his athletic niche as the scrumhalf on the rugby squad. He was small but strong and tough. In our junior year alone, he cracked a vertebrae, got a dozen or so stitches and spent a night in the hospital with a severe concussion. The only game he didn’t finish was the one with the concussion, but that is only because he did not become fully conscious until it was over. Otherwise, I am sure he would have wobbled back out there. After each game, he would come back to the room after the post-game parties, his glasses askew, black and blue everywhere, and a little tipsy, but the next morning he would be back at his desk studying.

A sound sleeper he could sleep through both his alarm clocks and a few verses of  “Lazy Eddie Will You Get Up?” until we hit on the foolproof way to get him up. Each morning, two of us would go in, each take one end of his bed, lift it a foot or two off the floor, and drop it. He never did figure out how to sleep through that. Despite our assurances that we would continue to get him up for classes the next year, he decided that it would be wasting his father’s hard earned money to come back to Amherst when he had been accepted to dental school, so off he went sans degree. 

Before leaving for good, he helped me bartend the Class of  ’75 Reunion, of course organizing a rugby game between the alumni and current players. We then loaded up my car with all his stuff and drove it back to Michigan. Ed was always a great road trip companion, even helping with the driving even if he never drove a standard before. Of course, he revealed this fact only after he was behind the wheel. On this trip, he showed what a good sport he could be. Two long-haired college kids driving a car dragging its mudflaps through U.S. Customs at 3 a.m. raised some suspicions in the agent on duty. She made us (actually me, she confined Ed to the car) empty much of his carefully packed stuff out of the car. When I tried to repack the trunk, not everything would fit, so the next few hours Ed sat under clothes and a box or two as he tried to navigate us to his house.

After dental school, he settled into his life quite easily. Never wanting much himself in the way of material goods, he bought a small house and a small car and proceeded to build a high-quality dental practice. His careful analysis of anything he did made him a knowledgeable clinician. In an ever-changing field, his studious nature kept him abreast of the latest technology and ideas. His loyalty and integrity made his office staff devoted to him and his patients send their friends to him. He built himself a fine practice while also serving in various positions in the Lakeland Valley Dental Society, including president.

In August 1988, he married Lauren Oliver. He finally felt secure enough and in love enough to not spend all of his time doing dentistry. With Lauren broadening his outlook, he joined the board of the local children’s museum in St. Joe, which then elected him president. True to form, he researched exhibits with diligence, even to the point of visiting us and asking to see all the children’s museums in the area. This endeared him to my children.

As the years progressed, daughters Elizabeth and Anna came along to give Ed more playmates. Of course, he would quiz all his friends on how they treated their kids, what toys they recommend, what computer games and so on. His life was picture perfect from his standpoint, financially secure, a wife who understood him and two wonderful daughters. 

However, he started having dizzy spells when he stood up. His doctor thought it was heart related but nothing could be found and his treatment didn’t work. A number of doctors and a trip to the Mayo Clinic later could not give him a diagnosis. Meanwhile, he got sicke,r so that by the time he got to the Mayo for his six-month follow-up, he had enough symptoms for a diagnosis of Shy-Drager Syndrome. He told only his immediate family, until he sold his practice some months later. He sent me a letter so that I could look up the disease as Ed knew I would. The description was devastating. He called two days later as he promised in the letter. His voice, which under normal circumstances was quiet, was now weakened to almost inaudible as he described his plans to play with his kids with the time he had left.  They took a family trip to Florida before Ed deteriorated too much. He then settled into a quiet routine of throwing games of Candyland to Anna, sending email letters with numerous Internet jokes and trying not to be a burden to anyone. As he became more incapacitated, he joked about “the disease” remarking that he was “a living physiology experiment” and that his voice sounded like “a hoarse frog.” He rarely complained, although once he did explode with, “This damn disease!  Each time I get used to the latest symptom, I get another.” As the Summer of 1999 wore on, his letters got shorter and sounded tired but still he never let on that he was suffering or that his time was growing short.  He refused the tracheotomy that would have extended his life and passed on as he expected while sleeping.

The last line of the email he sent me the day before he died says a lot about Ed. It read, “Got to go play Spaceopoly.  Sorry.” That was Ed. Children first, but not without being sorry that he could not spend more time with a friend. Those of us who were friends have lost a special part of our lives. His surviving family members, his wife, Lauren; daughters Elizabeth and Anna; his father, John Sr.; and his brothers, John Jr., James, David and Robert have lost a wonderful, irreplaceable part of theirs. He will, of course, still live in our memories and in the work he did, but his passing leaves the world a poorer place for he was a man of rare integrity and talent.

Larry LoPresti ’76