obituary of an alumni director

No, he's not completely dead, but I'm sure a part of him died the day he left.
As a disclaimer: I haven't spoken to him since I got the e-mail that he was no longer with us.

Once upon a time there was an alumni director who we will call fred. Fred wasn't always an alumni director, at one time he was a regular alumnus and before that a student. Fred thought that he would stay forever at the institute where he was happy. He learned Torah, played ball and rooted for the bears. Fred finally left the institution when he found out that he would only be allowed to touch with two hands in touch football games and that it was considered inappropriate to throw younger bachurim into trees.

A couple years later, after Fred learned a little bit about life, got married and learned a little bit more about life, he returned to the institute from where he had only good memories. When the administration saw that Fred was not going to leave this time they asked him if he would be the alumni director, thinking that would stop him from swinging on the rafters in the new bais midrash and throwing freshies over the railing by the old dorm rooms. As the alumni director Fred was responsible for picking apples and eating in NY restaurants. As long as there were other alumni there it was all good. He was also supposed to remind alumni of all the good memories that they had of the institute so that they would have a warm, fuzzy feeling inside and give the institute a lot of money. But it was more then just money, it was about maintaining a connection to the past and also about money.

Now Fred has decided that it is time to leave the institution again, once again for personal reasons. This time I doubt the reasons had to do with touch football, but it may have had to do with the Packers. It's hard to live in a state where you passionately hate their NFL team. "Personal reasons" gives you such a wide range of options to make assumptions as to why a person would leave.

We wish Fred much luck in his future endeavors and we are certain that he will be back at the institute at some point, if not permanently then as a visit, because it is so hard to just let go.