Eli Daniel Nemetz Todd

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Eli Daniel Nemetz Todd, 23, beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin and friend, died Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Brooklyn, of an apparent drug overdose.

Eli was born Feb. 25, 1993, in Cooley Dickinson Hospital and attended Northampton Public Schools until his senior year of high school, which he completed at Greenfield Community College, receiving his diploma from Northampton High School. He also attended religious school at Congregation B'nai Israel where he became a bar mitzvah embraced by his Jewish community in March 2006. After his year at GCC, Eli attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and graduated with honors in May 2015 with a bachelor's of fine arts in creative writing. He was also awarded the Fiction Prize. Eli's senior thesis was a collection of short stories, two of which were subsequently published in the literary journals The Literary Review and The Agriculture Reader.

Eli spent three summers with Young Writers Workshop, a residential program for high school students run out of the University of Virginia. He taught there for two summers during and immediately after college. After graduating from Pratt, and then working as a program coordinator for NYPIRG for the following academic year, he returned to YWW as an assistant director last summer. At the time of his death, Eli was living in Brooklyn, continuing to write, and working as a barista while he contemplated his future. He was considering returning to school for his master's of fine arts.

From a very young age, Eli exhibited a facility with and love for language and a keen empathy with others. He read early, voraciously and deeply, absorbing literary styles and human stories. Those who encountered him as a young child were likely to be impressed by his indefatigable verbosity, a trait he held into adulthood. His sense of humor also developed early and matured into a wry and quick wit. With his wide grin and dimples, his ability to converse and engage on a deep level with people of all stripes, Eli collected a broad cohort of devoted friends. He remained close to many of his childhood friends from Northampton and was well loved by newer friends in Brooklyn and beyond.

Eli's empathetic nature and his desire to plumb the extremes of human emotions, often reflected in his writing, led him to some dark places and to risky behavior. Like many who succumb to the lure of drugs, Eli wrestled with his own personal demons. While nothing in the days leading up to his death indicates that his overdose was intentional, he knowingly flirted with danger, perhaps in an effort to tame those demons. He skated on the edge, and he fell off.

Despite all this, to know Eli was to know a bright, funny raconteur, a beautiful young man who loved life, had a fine sense of the ridiculous and an ability to live intensely in the moment - all fully evident to his friends and family right up until the day of his death. That he is no longer with us feels unimaginable.

Eli leaves in his wake devastated family and friends, his parents John Todd and Dorothy Nemetz; siblings Hannah and Abraham Todd and Abe's fiancé Joyce Chan; grandparents George and Kathleen Todd; his uncles and aunts Richard and Wendy Nemetz, James Nemetz and Debra Colo-Nemetz, Adam Todd and Cynthia Richards and Peter Todd; step-aunt Anne Kreeger and her fiancé Matthew Konicek; cousins Jeremy Nemetz, Anna and Sarah Nemetz and Lilith and Samuel Todd; and step-cousins Ethan and Benjamin Solomon. His friends are too numerous to name, but his loss will be felt particularly by his girlfriend Anna Lawrence, whom he dearly loved, and his longtime loving friend and roommate John Wolfe.

Funeral services will be held Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at Congregation B'nai Israel in Northampton, Massachusetts, with burial to follow in the synagogue cemetery.

Donations in Eli's memory may be made to Congregation B'nai Israel, the Northampton Education Foundation and the Northampton Center for the Arts.

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