Grandpa Mark Beach on Doni

          Doni was very generous and patient with his grandparents. He used his growing computer knowledge to help us make decisions about what to buy and how best to use it during visits and phone calls to New York to his father’s parents and to Oregon to his mother’s parents. He was our computer guru. His enthusiasm for new technologies was contagious. We also served as additional “labs” for his self-directed computer education which started on all the computers at home in the Bulow household.

He stood on his father’s shoulders. Ephraim is well versed and adept with computers and served his law firm with his computer expertise. Doni’s innate interest in “how things work” led him to take apart and examine any electronic device the family hadn’t used in the previous few hours. He was not intimidated by complexity. Rebuilding them was another challenge he tackled in his self education. “Why are these four screws still on the table?”

Grandpa Mark Beach has these memories: “When Doni was 15 and in Oregon for a few days in the summer. I took him to a huge warehouse full of electronic waste – boxes and bins stuffed with keyboards, mice, hard drives and monitors. He couldn’t believe all those treasures were really waste, especially the processors. He’d look in a bin, identify the good ones and beg the manager for an arm load. We were astounded at his skills, just as the geeks later that day at the computer repair shop were astounded. He could have had a summer job on the spot.

            “During the last six months of his life, we spent hours on the phone assessing my digital needs and specifying new systems and techniques to meet them. In addition to appreciating Doni’s help, I always felt amazed at his instincts about, for lack of a better term, customer service. Yes he often got ahead of my technical understanding. But mostly he asked the right questions about what I expected from computers and software. Occasionally I got ahead of him regarding the future of digital capacities. He’d have new insights ready for our next phone call.  This was especially true regarding solid state printing, a field that we both found fascinating because of its investment opportunities.

               “Uri’s eulogy for Doni fit my own outlook. Our bodies die, but the fact that we once lived makes us immortal. Doni helped me find my way to more rewarding capacity in my relations with my community, so I will think of him every time I use techniques he helped me develop. I won’t be able to look at my computer screen or organize my files in the cloud without hearing his voice. And long after I’m gone, my community will benefit from Doni’s life because of how he helped me prepare what I collected and left behind.”

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