Howard Charles "Howie" Ritter Jr.

Uncle Howie´s infectious laughter made him friends wherever he went. He was much cooler than my Dad, but also one of Dad´s best buddies their entire lives, so I had to give Dad credit for having such a cool friend. In the last years I have not seen Uncle Howie as often as I would have liked but he kindly opened his house to my family and me for overnight stops before our flights back to Europe. Thanks for everything, Uncle Howie, you will dearly missed and this world has lost a wonderful personality.

If you did not know Howie Ritter, it's just hard to imagine you're as lucky a person as anyone who did. He (I knew him as an uncle) made not just the best hash browns in the world. He had one of the best laughs, and, along with his wife and kids, the biggest of hearts. You always knew you were loved by him, and that was such a great feeling, even when you felt boring and it made no sense to you. The only comfort one gets from his passing is that he's already lighting up the faces of those in Heaven, already making their afterlives somehow even more lovely than before.