I was shocked and saddened beyond words to hear of Sid's passing. Sid was my colleague, collaborator, and friend for more than fifty years. We shared a passion at different times for digital filters, filterbanks and wavelets and we also produced many proposals together in the area of technology enhanced education. In knew his career well – in fact I was the Chair of the IEEE Jack Kilby Signal Processing Award Committee when Sid received that award. But to me, Sid was much more than that – he was my friend.
Let me tell a few stories. At one point years ago, Sid popped up and said “I have found an old friend of yours and you two need to meet.” Well, in my youth I had built hot rods from junked cars – as had Sid – and even raced them at local drag strips. My “pit crew” had included a sixteen year old friend from my high school with whom I had lost contact years before, and that was who Sid had found. How he discovered the pieces and then took the time to reach out I don't really know, but it meant a great deal to me. That friend was Rice Professor Ken Kennedy – already a legendary National Academy Computer Science researcher. I reconnected and remained close to Ken the rest of his (too short) life, attending a whole series of reunions together – Sid made that connection.
Another story concerns my daughter Tracy Jo. Tracy Jo attended Rice as an undergraduate, starting out in Physics. But she had switched to English by her second year, which I guess was a good thing because the swept her class awards in both poetry and prose. Well I was alone with Tracy Jo at the awards luncheon, but then I saw Sid. Sid was there with a student of his own who had won an Engineering award. Sid joined us without hesitation – his student also wrote poetry by the way. Like Tracy Jo, Sid's son is also a folk musician, and this connection ultimately led to Tracy Jo, my late wife Aina Jo, and I learning a great deal about the Houston acoustic music scene. That was very important to us and I was hoping for more.
Finally I must mention the last event in which Sid did me a service of incalculable value. I last saw Sid at a Signal Processing celebration at Rice that ended on April 26 2019. The photo I posted is from that meeting. Two days later my wife Aina Jo died suddenly and unexpectedly in the night. I was far from my home base in Atlanta, so I reached out for advice on the practical issues of death far from home. Well Sid did far more than just give advice – he helped me personally in so many ways. Death requires empathy but it is also well served by engineering pragmatism. For this combination Sid was the perfect man.
