Neil Armstrong.
1930-08-05 to 2012-08-25.
One of the very few humans to have come even close to slipping the surly bonds of this earth, and treading the high untresspassed sanctity of space. He's now left us to join the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds and...whatever the Great Mystery holds in store. (I don't know his views on death and what it holds, but if there is any `after death', he surely deserves as good a one as anyone. He was made of undiluted awesome.)
An IRC friend of mine wrote of him `Lived to 82 with tremendous accomplishments... I'd say he was as close as anyone comes to "ok, I beat life. Next game please"'. I concur wholeheartedly.
Our world was enriched by his presence and is dimished by his loss...and, fortunately, tremendously enriched by his legacies.
And, my thanks to RCAF pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr. for writing the poem I cribbed the more poetic phrases above from.