Losing Luke

by Jason Gardner

Being a bit late to say my part, it’s tricky to write something new after echoing most of everyone else is saying about his mastery of networking and connecting people in an exquisitely soulful and authentic way. To say I am completely gutted is an understatement.

When you were with him for five minutes or an hour, he had an amazing focus and you were the only person in his world at that moment, as he usually strived to find a few suggestions or people to help out with that which you struggled.

I write this in the first dark moments after Yom Kippur, in Paris, where the weather is gorgeous and most of the city has been operating as normal during the Jewish Holiday. However, I’m not as normal, after reflecting on this loss. Although I’ve been remote for a few years now, Luke has always been in touch with me, making sure to meet up in the brief return visits to NY.

Although we mostly talked in business environments, I considered Luke a good friend and had him attend my wedding. When we both were starting out, needing some structure in our operations, we put together a daily or weekly check-in, for goal setting and accountability, and that grew into him being a key member and advisor of my board of my photography business, and he was always so so so positive about both of our progress. In fact, I think I once joked with him about nearly all of his sentences ended up in exclamation points! Not too many of course!!!!

I’ll add a few more gems to the pile for remembrances. I will echo a few people who commented on his analytic ability, did anyone ever get a good look at his intricate and totally baffling kind of to-do list, that looked more like an advanced calculus theory, of interlocking matrices and codes and tick marks? I was always floored by this. He enjoyed trading life hacks, especially for email and Linked In, and he was an early adopter of the good old Boolean search, which he patiently showed me. Also he was one of the first ones to deftly use the subject line as the whole message – I had to ask him what EOM meant in the body of the email. Hah!

I will end by saying that I counted him as one of my core people, those who you can count on to run by some crazy idea you have, those to whom you can open your heart, those who will be there for you, plain and simple. I’m honored to have taken the shot for his business profile photo, and I’ve dug through my archive to send to Nicole a bunch of photos for the memorial. It looks like many of you saw him as chosen family too, which has been both enlightening in terms of amount of people he had deep connections with, and at the same time not a big surprise, as he had incredible empathy, and kindness, while being totally genuine, in spades. I’m sure you’re inscribed in the Book of Life. I’ll miss you my friend.