Death And Volleyball

I have been playing recreational volleyball one night a week, every week for about 2 years. One of the people who showed up occasionally was a nice old guy with an Eastern European accent. He hadn't been around for a few weeks. It turns out he died while on vacation last month. One of the other players brought a newspaper clipping of his obituary. This part is pretty amazing:

[Mr. X] was born in Poland in 1924. While still in high school he was taken to the front in Germany to do forced labor for the German army. He escaped to Holland, was recaptured and then escaped again a day before the end of World War II.

And that was just the first chapter of his life. After that, he came to America, got a couple of advanced technical degrees, taught at numerous colleges, travelled, built things, learned new languages, raised a family and even wrote a couple of books. His obit also mentioned that he enjoyed playing volleyball.

Of course, it does not do justice to any man's life to summarize it in a few lines of text. There are stories all around us.