Anonymous

Hi Amir,

It’s the fourth anniversary of September 11. As we remember the heroes who fought back against the terrorists and defeated them on Flight 93, we also pause to remember you and your many good deeds. We cannot bring you back, but your memories and courage live on in our hearts forever.

Hi Amir,

I saw a story of a Wall Street Journal interview with the CEO of your company Visible World. There was another story of a doctor from Englewood, NJ, who needs a transplant to survive. So I’m thinking you again. Your spirit is with me, and I’ll never forget you.

Hi Amir,

I was thinking of you today on your yarzheit. At 5:30 p.m. when your unveiling started, the light bulbs in my bathroom went off. At around 8 p.m. when your memorial service started, I suddenly burst into tears and lost my self-control. I knew today would be a hard day for me as indeed it was.

I remember the cemetery where I went to your burial and the shul where I went to your funeral. My heart still breaks for your family who suffers so much from your heart-rending death.

I will never forget you and will pursue my hopes and dreams and passions in your memory. I will strive to be a better Jew and a better person and to make the world a better place and to reach out to others.

The tears continue to flow along with the knowledge that you remain in our hearts and have given me a lot of strength and hope in the past year.

Amir, we are thinking a lot about you today…and will continue thinking about you over the next few days. There will be an Ultimate Frisbee tournament this weekend in your memory. It’s called “In the Spirit of the Game” in your honor…to thank
you for being the kind and gentle person we in the ultimate community knew you to be!!

Thanks for all your hard work and dedication.

I was thinking of Amir again because his English yarzheit is coming up soon on March 25. I saw a story in the Jewish Press about some nice Jewish teenage boys in Israel who were killed in a car accident, and I thought of Amir of course. I was very sad.

Throughout my joys and sorrows in the past year Amir has been with me in my thoughts and hopes and sometimes even in my dreams. I miss him still and always will. My heart still breaks for his mother Sara and for his sister Shoshana and brother Uri and all his friends and family. Their loss is inconsolable and unimagineable.

I had been thinking of Amir because I’m going to a Jewish social action meeting tonight here in New York. I know his spirit will be with me there as we discuss how to tackle the myriad difficult social issues facing our city and what our small Jewish community can contribute toward solving them.

I thought of Amir in a very unexpected context this morning also. I was up surfing the web to do research on the Iraqi democracy struggle and the emerging Lebanese democracy movement. I found many moving young male and female bloggers who were dreaming and acting for freedom in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iran.

Then I stumbled across a Saudi blogger who reminded me of Amir. His blog name was Saudi Jeans. He was a 21 year old IT manager named Ahmed. Among one of his many postings was a salute to the Kuwaiti women who were protesting to demand the right to vote and a link to pictures of their protest.

The cultural gap between Jews and Saudi Arabia is about as big as it gets. In Saudi Arabia Jews aren’t even allowed to VISIT the kingdom by law. Men and women are not allowed to interact AT ALL. But still you see that many young Arab men and women share the universal human dream of freedom.

Amir always told me that computers were the wave of the future. And he realized much more than I ever did how much computers could improve human life. Now computers are expanding the possibility for human freedom, self-expression, and democracy in the Arab world in ways that I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.

The tears flow non stop as I read the words of praise, words of pain and the words of profound loss echoing around this special young man. Although I knew Amir solely through the eyes of my son, it is through this lens that I was informed of his unique qualities. Amir who touched the lives of so many will live on in those who loved him.

So sad for this immense loss,

Mother of a friend to Amir

I had met Amir on one or two outings and after reading all of these accounts I am sorry I never got to know him. He was an amazing individual from everyone’s descriptions and may we all be inspired by his memory.

-Aimee Ben-Ezra Cohen

Dear Amir,
What can else can I say besides I had a huge crush on you in high school. You were the only guy I knew who could think with such keen understanding of the universe, listen with total respect and absorption, and speak with knowledge that preceded your time. And you did this all simultaneously with a smirk-ish smile, a squint and slight roll of your eyes that looked outward and up, as if you were amusing yourself with thought, basking in the enlightenment you gained by listening to your peers and reveling in the prospect of the future and the unknown. You made us think, “Well, what if?” And “What’s so wrong with that?” Those of us that had the great fortune to know you also had the great fortune of expanding our minds and challenging the limitations of thought, of interpersonal communication, and spreading our own ideas with a little more enthusiasm. With your eyes injustice was real, absolute was always a concept up for discussion, and above all, humanity was very much an every moment event not up for discussion.

Amir, where ever you are and whomever you are with they are lucky to have you. We all know from experience, a life altering experience none of us will ever forget.

Much love to you,
Dariele Watnick

The following piece appears in the fall 2004 issue of Ramaz High School’s Alumni Newsletter, Ramblings.

IN MEMORIAM
AMIR LOPATIN ’94 z”l

It has been five months now since our classmate Amir Lopatin died suddenly in a car accident just several weeks past his 28th birthday. To his family and close friends, the tragedy of his untimely death is still shocking and difficult to accept, and we continue to strive for ways to appropriately remember Amir and the impact he had on all who knew him.

At Ramaz, Amir stood out as a brilliant and creative student, with talents that ranged from math and science to poetry, art, music and theatre. He had a precocious intellectual appetite and was constantly recommending books to his friends (Salinger, Vonnegut, Hesse, Kesey, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky) and encouraging us in our own creative pursuits. It was Amir’s character, however, that had the strongest impact. At an age more typically characterized by insecurity and conforming behavior, Amir carried his own unconventional style with an unassuming manner and easy self-confidence. We always welcomed his humor and good natured antics, his zany observations, and his blunt honesty. He constantly challenged us to be more truthful with ourselves and with each other.

After graduation, Amir spent a year studying at Yeshivat Hamivtar in Israel. His rabbis and fellow yeshiva students recall his keen intellect and insightful questions, and the genuine sincerity with which he approached his own religious and spiritual quests.

From there, Amir went on to attend Brown University where he studied computer science. Even in high school, Amir was gifted programmer and he brought his trademark passion and creativity to his work with computers. After graduating from Brown, Amir accepted a position in a large software design company in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he worked to develop tank simulation programs. He later moved back to New York to join a small start-up software company where he worked on designing user interfaces and other programs.

Although his career took him in a different direction, Amir was always a gifted writer and poet. He had a magical way with words, an ability to blend the absurd with the profound in his own unique language and playful style. More than any photograph, it is Amir’s writings – ramblings in emails and letters, website postings, personal essays and poetry – that most vividly evoke his unique personality.

Amir had a wide assortment of interests and hobbies that constantly vied for his time and attention. He loved nature, and was an avid enthusiast of a range of outdoor activities, including hiking, biking, skiing, and sailing. He was a staunch environmentalist and went to great lengths to avoid causing any pollution. Perhaps his favorite outdoor activity was ultimate frisbee. Amir belonged to the ultimate league at Brown and when he came back to New York he volunteered to organize the then haphazard league here. Almost single handedly, he turned the New York league from a series of scattered pick-up games into an institution.

Amir always carried a strong sense of ethics and social responsibility. While at Brown he was a member of an organization that fed the hungry and he spent his spring breaks working with the homeless. When he moved back to New York, he volunteered weekly to teach sailing to inner city youth and was a “Big Brother” for three years to one young boy. He was a constant source of encouragement to his friends, and a devoted son and brother to his family. During the waning months of his father’s life, he moved back home to Englewood to assist and comfort his family as best he could.

Although ensconced in a lucrative job and familiar social environment, in recent years Amir decided to take his career in a dramatically new direction: to use his creativity with computers to teach. This past fall, Amir began his first year of doctoral studies at the Learning Sciences and Technology Design program at Stanford University, a pioneering program dedicated to designing innovative learning technologies.

We can only speculate on the far-reaching extent of Amir’s contributions had he lived out the full potential of his life. To those close to him, it is perhaps most painful to accept that we will forever be without the unique pleasure of his conversation. To speak with Amir was to inhabit a special world removed from the petty and mundane aspects or ordinary life, where obscure references from philosophy, literature, poetry, and music were synthesized with Amir’s unique and refreshing take on nearly any topic. Through his insightfulness, his intellectual curiosity, and his humor he was able to transform situations and relationships to make them more meaningful, more interesting and more honest. In email correspondence with a close friend, Amir once wrote: “people leave your life and new people come in, but there are no substitutes.” For those who knew Amir, there is truly no substitute. We will miss him sorely.

Moshe Malina ‘94; Jonathan Wolfson ‘94