Gary Gross

Brother Gary Gross sadly died of a brain aneurysm on Oct. 19, 2011, and passed to the Adytum on High at age 42. He was married to a delightful wife Lani and had a beautiful daughter named Talia.  They lived in Huntington Beach in Orange County. Gary is originally from San Jose and often posted about the Giants’ baseball success on facebook.
Gary attended Georgetown Law School with Adam Treiger and their future friend State Sen. Ted Lieu. Gary worked for various departments as a lawyer for Los Angeles County, with 15 years of public service.
Many brothers remember him as one who was always calm, never raised his voice, and always positive and found the humor in things. He pledged in 1989 and graduated in 1991.

Gary befriended Chuck Osterlund, a 1950s graduate, when the began sharing rides to Founders Day, and they often rode bicycles together along the coast.
Gary will be missed but his spirit will live on.
Eulogy for Gary Gross
Delivered October 28, 2011
INTRODUCTION
–My name is Adam Treiger.  I am honored and humbled that Lani asked me to say a few words about Gary.
–I met Gary when he pledged Sigma Pi fraternity at UCLA in 1989.
–For 2 years, we were fraternity brothers and friends.
–We went to law school together at Georgetown in 1991.
–For 3 years we were roommates, study partners, philosophers and travelers.
–We came back to CA in the 1994, where we worked together for a time.  We were roommates for 3 more years, along with Milena who would become my wife, and Matt Rips, who are both here today.
–He was the best man at my wedding in July 1997, standing up there with me as I embarked on my life as a family man.  Senator Ted Lieu and Todd Levin, who’re here today, were also standing with us.  My wedding ended my time with Gary as roommates, but I’m happy to say, not as friends.
–I really cannot sum up Gary’s life for you today.  I have no deep words of wisdom that can give meaning to his life, or his shocking, unfair, intensely sad passing.
–What I can do is take you back with me to a simpler time.  A time when most of us did not have spouses, kids, mortgages or careers.  It was 1989-1997 – it was my time with Gary.
–Today I want to share with you some of my memories from that time.  They are my personal memories, that’s true.  But I hope they will remind you of your own times with Gary, so that we can all remember him as the happy, silly, fun-loving, free-spirited, spontaneous, adventurous young man that he was then, and remained until he left us too soon.
UCLA
–At UCLA Gary was a studious sort.  He set out for the library most nights to study.  Trouble was, most nights he did not make it to the library, if there was anything the Sigma Pis had to say about it.  He was a reluctant partier, it’s true, but once convinced, there was no stopping him.
–Even so, he became the scholarship chairman at the fraternity house.  This was no easy task.  We had some brothers who viewed academic probation as a badge of honor.  But, despite some push back, Gary managed to poke, prod and encourage our friends to do their best, and he saw the house’s GPA rise to near the top of the row during his tenure.  He was very proud of that.  He reminded me of it every February at Founders Day, our fraternity’s annual reunion.
–When we were seniors, we both got into the law school of our choice.  Gary got into Hastings, and I got into Georgetown.  Had Gary not told me that he also got into Georgetown, our lives would have been very different.  But, he did tell me, and I proceeded to berate, pressure, entice, and lobby him, day and night, to change his mind and join me in Washington DC.  In the end he did change his mind and decided to come to Georgetown, which I count as one of the great victories of my life.

GEORGETOWN
–During law school, Gary became very passionate about social causes and politics.
–He carried his ACLU card with him everywhere, and would take it out and brandish it like a sword whenever he had the opportunity to debate civil liberties.
–The only time I ever had a fight with Gary it was about capital punishment.  We argued all night long — sometimes yelling — almost coming to blows.  Neither of us gave way, but, in the end, Gary won.  I conceded to one of his many arguments, and he changed my mind.  Not many people could have done that, and still fewer would have even cared enough to try.
–When he became counsel for the L.A. Sheriff, I made him remove his ACLU card from his wallet.  Gary grudgingly agreed, but he snapped it back once he stopped “working for the Man”.
–During law school, Gary and I never missed a Saturday Night Live episode.  If we were at a bar on a Saturday night, we’d come home, watch the first 45 minutes of SNL, and then go back out to the bar, reciting the lines.
–Waynes World was Gary’s favorite sketch.  When the Wayne’s World movie came out, we saw it on opening night.  Gary’s favorite Waynes World line was when Garth told Wayne that a woman he had his eye on was so gorgeous, if she were a president, she’d be babe-ra-ham Lincoln.  He repeated that line so many times.  That was classic “Silly Gary”, a side of him I know we all loved.
–Gary loved words.  So did I.  Sometimes we would look at the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary for strange words that caught our fancy.  I know, we were a couple of nerdy law students.
–One day we were looking for a name for Gary’s favorite house plant.  In 1992, he bought a plant that the nursery said could not be killed.  It was an ugly plant, with two twin stalks and thin, scraggly leaves.  But, Gary cared for it like it was a prized orchid.
–So, we found the word, Hobson Jobson, which meant “a folk etymological alteration of a borrowed word, like ‘compound’, from the Malay, ‘campong’.”  Gary thought Hobson Jobson had a nice ring to it, and so he gave that name to his plant.  Whenever he told someone the plant’s name, he repeated that definition.  I’ll never forget it.
–One word away from Hobson Jobson in the dictionary was “Hobson’s Choice”.  Many of you already know about our history with that word, so I’ll spare you the details.  But, suffice it to say, Gary and I wrote an article about it for the Georgetown paper, and after law school, our friend Ted Lieu made sure that it became part of the Ninth Circuit’s jurisprudence, and I painted that name on the side of my sailboat.  Once nerdy law students, always nerdy law students.
–Does anyone remember “the Storm of the Century”?  This was a blizzard in DC in March of 1993.  When it hit, you could barely see your hands in front of your face, the wind was howling and the ice and snow whipping.  We could have stayed home, but Gary insisted that we trudge through the blizzard, on foot, to the nearest video store to rent some Clint Eastwood movies.  Gary loved Clint.  We rented “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, “A Fist Full of Dollars” and “For A Few Dollars More”.  Lo and behold, next door to the video store was a liquor store.  We bought a bottle of Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey, you know, to keep the chill off.  We went home and watched all three Spaghetti Westerns, taking a shot of Whiskey whenever Clint did, as the wind and snow howled past our windows.  That was one great afternoon.
–In August of 1992 we drove across country together, mostly on the I-40.
–I had never seen the Grand Canyon, and didn’t really want to go out of my way.  But, Gary forced us to take a detour and see it, telling me that it was the right thing to do.
–But that was nothing compared to Gary’s insistence that we find that famed corner in Winslow Arizona made famous by the Eagles.  We stood on that corner just waiting for a girl to drive past in a flat bed ford, which did not happen, but we thought it was cool anyway.
–When we were passing though Little Rock, Arkansas, Gary wanted to stop in to candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign office to see his friend who was in charge of the radio campaign.
–We did not get to see Bill that day, but, when Clinton won later that year, Gary asked his friend the radio guy, who now worked in the White House, if we could get tickets to the inaugural.  Gary’s friend came through, and we got pretty darn good tickets, not in the front section, but just one section back.  I’ll never forget how festive the atmosphere was, and how proud Gary was that we were there because of him.  Our friend Sean Bloch, who is here today, was at the inaugural with us.
–Back to our road trip.  In Memphis, of course, we had to hear blues on Beale Street, eat BBQ at Corkys, and visit Graceland.  I wasn’t so sure about Graceland, but Gary, again, insisted.  Gary said that we were in Memphis, and we have to see Graceland . . .  he said it was a requirement.  I reluctantly went, and I caught the Elvis bug that day.  Afterwards, Gary and I would both swear that we saw Elvis’ ghost move a trash can on the grounds outside the mansion.  Gary thought that to go to Graceland and not see Elvis’ ghost would be a wasted trip.
–Toward the end of the road trip we cut up to Ohio and made a long detour to see the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Home and Library.  Gary wanted to go just to say we did.  It was a boring little place — no one there but us — but Gary loved it anyway.  We kept a Rutherford B Hayes refrigerator magnet on our fridge for the next two years.
–In the Spring of 1993 we took a road trip from DC to New Orleans, with our friend Lina Kharnak
–When driving through Kentucky, Gary wanted to visit a Bourbon distillery.  We went to the Makers Mark distillery, which, at that time, was not a famous brand.  We were the only ones there and the distiller got us very warm and happy with tasting after tasting.
–When we left, there was no way we could drive, so we walked across the street and had some amazing fried chicken and biscuits at a little local tavern.  When we were sober, we got in the car, put on a Don McLane tape and sang “Bye, Bye Ms. American Pie” over and over until we were horse.  Gary kept pushing us to sing it one more time.

AFTERWARD
–After graduation in 1994, we were separated for a time, and then Gary came down to L.A. and moved in with Matt Rips and me in our Marina Del Rey bachelor’s pad.
–We always ate well, frequenting Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch for soul food (Gary loved the corn bread muffins), Fat Burger (he liked it with a fried egg on top), Phillips for double dip French Dip, and, of course, our favorite Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
–One time Gary, Matt and I went to an event at Ruth’s Chris in support of the Horatio Alger Foundation, and we dined with Carl Karcher, founder of Carl’s Junior.  Carl was not exactly the most liberal of people, but Gary got along with him like they were old friends.  As usual.  Gary could get along with anybody.
–Gary taught me to really appreciate Pink Floyd, and especially, Dark Side of the Moon.  I had always liked the band, but Gary was fond of opening a beer or two, turning off the lights, laying on the couch, and blasting the entire Dark Side album from start to finish.  I joined him more than once, as did Milena and Matt.  That was really the right way to do it.

CONCLUSION
–Yeah, that’s what I learned from Gary — The right way to do it.  Gary taught me the right way to be a friend.  The right way to travel, and eat, and play.  The right way to make a decision.  And the right way to care about people.
–Gary’s been taken from us.  But they can’t take away the lessons he taught us, or the memories that he made with us.