Bob Levenson
Ron Lok was my best friend for 47-years – his presence is going to be greatly missed!We had parallel lives Ron and I; we were both engineering students at Cal Poly, both members of the Zen Bei Butoku Kai martial arts class in San Francisco, both worked at Bechtel at the beginning of our careers and both worked for government agencies at the end of our careers. We spent a lot of time together in martial arts training and eating at various restaurants in Chinatown after class. We would meet on the weekend to play tourist in the Bay Area and meet in the evening to go clubbing until we both met our spouses. I met and married Mary Ann and Ron met and married Patty within a year of each other, 1979 and 1980, respectively. We both had two wonderful children and we both loved our families.Since I still work for the Federal Government and Ron was retired, I always looked forward to meeting Ron in San Francisco for lunch and coffee every other month whereby we would discuss the latest news about our friends and family and listen to Ron’s advice on investments and retirement.Unfortunately, the parallelism still continued with the death of my spouse in 2016 due to cancer and the death of Patty’s spouse in 2018 due to a heart arrhythmia.There is an empty place in my heart today due to Ron’s passing that can never be filled. I will, however, reflect on 47-years of fond memories of our special friendship.