Dear Friends,

I'm sorry that I have not been able to get to all of you individually, but I wanted to let you know that my brother in law, Ronnie Kraar (on the right in this photo, with his brother/my husband Marty), passed away this past Monday, Jan. 15, after enduring many years of illness and failing health. We had been to see him on Saturday at Mercy Hospital in Miami and then we flew home. His condition simply deteriorated overnight, and Marty cancelled all his business travel to fly back to Florida on Monday morning. Two hours and fifteen minutes after Marty arrived at the hospital, Ronnie peacefully passed away, surrounded by his loving wife and brother.

Around four years ago Ronnie started getting interested in Scrabble. As a birthday treat we bought him an NSA membership, a Deluxe board and some Scrabble merch. We started playing with him on ISC, where his handle was EyeDocRon. This enabled us not only to chat and "see" our brother all the time, but to also engage in our beloved pursuit.

Of all Ronnie's personal belongings that his wife was going to give us she wanted to keep the Scrabble stuff because she couldn't bear to part with it.

The bad aspect of all this is that ten months after my mum passed away, Marty's oldest brother, Louis, died. It is now ten months after that tragic event, and Marty's middle brother is gone, leaving Marty the sole survivor of his nuclear family.

The blessing in disguise is the of all the failing parts on his body that were not good enough to donate, EyeDocRon's eyes were perfect. He donated his corneas to the Eye Bank. A beautiful gift from a beautiful person. Rest well, Ronnie.

Below you will find Ronnie's obit from the Chicago Tribune. It is possible some of you had known him from his professional days.


Sincerely,
Lynda

PS -- we want to print out EyeDocRon's games that are in his history file on ISC as part of a scrapbook for our family. Can anyone let me know how this is done?