Donald Galfond

Don was my father Bill Bright's best friend from their teenage days, at the University of California. Even after their dormitory days ended, they wrote daily, weekly, regular letters to each other for the rest of their lives, sharing their love of classical music, linguistics, literature, and ongoing political arguments.

My father passed a few years before Don, and I know what a loss it was— my father would have felt the same if it were the other way around. They had extraordinary...