I just learned that Bernie DeKoven, a.k.a. \u201cBlue,\u201d has died, of cancer.<\/p>\r\n
Bernie was my high school friend Elyon\u2019s father. In high school and college, I had a hard time interacting with most of my friends\u2019 parents, but Bernie was different.<\/p>\r\n
He was one of the leaders of the New Games movement. I had grown up with the New Games books\u2014perhaps hard to avoid when you\u2019re the child of hippies in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s\u2014so I was impressed with him for that. I may have been even more impressed with his multiple computers running various games, which I think he may have been reviewing professionally at the time. And I was impressed with his affectionate relationship with his family, and with his friendliness.<\/p>\r\n
Later, he was one of the few parents-of-my-friends who stayed in touch. He and I were never super-close, but we intermittently sent friendly notes back and forth, and occasionally linked to each other\u2019s posts. He had become known as \u201cDr. Fun,\u201d and as the proprietor of the Deep Fun<\/a> and A Playful Path<\/a> websites. He posted regularly on Google+<\/a> about games and fun, and I was always pleased to see his posts.<\/p>\r\n But I drifted away from Google+, and somehow didn\u2019t know that he also posted regularly on Twitter. And I hadn\u2019t been in touch with him for a while. And so I didn\u2019t know about his cancer diagnosis last year, and I didn\u2019t see his farewell post<\/a> in November.<\/p>\r\n