IN MEMORIAM
Dan Schleck was the biggest guy in the room – when you met him, there was a 50/50 chance your first sentence would be, “Wow, how tall are you?” It was a refrain he was accustomed to answering, typically with some quip about his bald head and a stock line about reflections and mirages. When everyone thinks you’re larger than life, it’s hard to convince them otherwise. A few weeks ago, Dan made his final appearance at the firm, joining us downstairs for our summer party, moving and mingling like he hadn’t skipped a beat. But something was different. Cancer does that. Shifting through parts of the body like an unwelcome crasher, too oblivious to niceties to even ask – wow, how tall are you? To be clear, Dan still looked great. But whether it was the lighting or the treatment, he didn’t look as tall. It was the first moment for many of us that we realized something: maybe he never really was. Maybe his stature in our eyes was never about his height. Maybe, instead, it was about his presence. About how he made you feel. An infectious laugh that could bounce off even a sponge. A handshake that felt like an arm-wrestling competition with a bear. A personality that made you feel like the most important person in the room. And a love for his family and friends that went unmatched – except, of course, by the love we all felt in return. That’s a reflection we can all agree on – no tricks of the eye (or heart) involved. After Dan passed last week, we started going through his office for anything the family might need. There weren’t a lot of important documents. But there was an overwhelming amount of important pictures and handwritten notes. Most were done with crayons. He was with Messerli Kramer for just shy of 9 years, but Dan had countless memories from his kids stored in every drawer imaginable, most from close to 15 or 20 years ago – cherished relics he couldn’t bear to give up even when he’d moved offices or changed firms. Family never leaves you, even when your body needs to move on to someplace else. We will miss him terribly, but wherever he is now, we’re certain he has a few stick figure drawings hanging all around him – and that in every one of them, he’s at least twice as tall as everyone else on the page.
His obituary is available here.