My name is Howard Smead and I loved Ron like a brother. He was part of my family. He was my best friend for the past 20 years. He was drinking buddies with my father, confidant of my wife, and loving uncle to our son Julius.

Ron’s capacity for love was so clear in his affection for Julius — an affection that Julius shared and returned — he adored Ron — that for me it distilled why we have been so close for these past two decades, through times both difficult and glorious. The void that he will leave can never be filled.

His love for my family was even more profound than I realized. In his last hours, in his deep, dark agony, he even thought for Julius our unborn twins.

To all of you who know and love him his depth and breath of knowledge was vast. But it was his sensitivity, his caring, his gut level, heart-level sincerity that made him the person he was. Ron was the most sincere and honorable man I have ever known. It may be true that he was difficult to get to know. But as we — all of us — well know, once you knew him you couldn’t help but love him. He returned your friendship with a generosity of spirit and a sense of sharing that no one else I know ever did — or could.

When I think back on the things he gave me, I am humbled by those recollections. Events and moments. Long, late evenings of sharing thoughts of the ways of the world. What life meant for us. Neither of us had an answer. Although, Ron sure had some opinions.

But unlike myself, unlike many of us, Ron had seen quite a lot. Having seen the bad turned his life into something of a quest for the good. For understanding — and, I now know, for happiness.

He’d come up from an action-packed childhood, gone off to Vietnam, where he had some of the most fascinating experiences I’ve yet heard from that bizarre and regrettable war.

It was as though his quest for fulfillment really began in the unsettling streets and alleys of Saigon. From there went top New Zealand, now an opponent of the war. Where he drifted into — shall we say — the politics of reform. And got a life lesson about ideologues and social change that we all would do well to remember. They were incomplete people.

But it was the 70s and the entire world was incomplete in those days It affected his marriage to a woman he loved very much. He read ferociously and developed his strong mind. He drifted almost by happenstance into the world of food and fine wine. And left New Zealand with knowledge and skills that would bring him much success in the coming years.

He returned to America, to this area, and here he blossomed into the host and raconteur that warmed many a beautiful dinner table before many a sumptuous meal. The food, the wine, we all know about that. Or the cigars and port on his back porch — in freezing weather.

But, it wasn’t really the meals that he’d spent days preparing. Don’t you know that we could just as well have been slopping down Big Macs and Budweisers. It was what went on around the dining room table in his house on Frederick Street that made knowing Ron so rewarding. It’s so ironic that in his driven search for self-fulfillment, his efforts to realize his dreams, he gave us all so, so much.

Those feasts really were magical. In part, heart-to-heart dialogue. In part, moveable encounter group. In part, flat out political shouting matches. By then Ron and I were at opposite ends of the table in more ways in than one. His search had taken him towards other answers, political and social. And, being the person he was, he wanted to share those views with each and every one of us. (And to think, we never once threw anything at each other.)

Maybe it was the end of an era. Many of us went our separate ways. I was lucky. Ron and I became even closer friends. We ended up living within a block of one another. We never again became that close politically. But, from that we drew strength. It became a bond between us. Something we could agree to disagree on, with complete respect.

We began writing stories for newspapers and magazines together, which led to many more rewarding experiences for both of us.

Just a few years back, we were assigned to write a story about the wines industry on Long Island. In doing so, we had to taste through the entire line of wines for virtually every winery on Long Island, in two days (and there’s more than you would think).

We began at 8:30 in the morning, power tasting through the entire day, including raw barrel-samples until my mouth had turned into one large canker sore. I could hardly talk, let alone get my lips around a glass of what by then was tasting and smelling like turpentine.

But there was Ron swirling, sipping, snurfling, spitting — and pontificating. Malelactic this. Cold fermentation that. Sur Lees this one. Goute de terroir that one. Corkage, brix and residual sugar. Yata yata yata: Noble Rot. I kept reminding myself, hey, we’re getting paid for this. Ron was in his element, in his glory. He stunned and humbled skeptical vintners with his skilful descriptions of the subtleties of their wine.

At the end of the second day at the very last winery — Palmer — the wine maker had poured out the wine, lined up the glasses. Ron made it, right down to the last glass. Well almost. He held the wine to the light. Swirled, sipped, snarfled, spit and looked the wine maker square in the face and said, “This is definitely …….. drinky!"

He never lived that down. We made sure of that!

All I can say to you is that he never found the answers to his quest. What quests are ever answerable? But he had to know, he had to find out. Ron needed to figure things out. He felt things much more deeply than most of us. In his gut- honesty he could never be satisfied with the partial answers that would satisfy most of us.

Well, Ron, all I can say to you is that you cannot be replaced and will never be forgotten.

You are, my friend, most definitely drinky. Farewell, my brother.