Mark Richter
On the wall of Mark Richter’s intensive care room, where he lay sedated as he fought COVID-19, hung two pieces of paper. On one was a bulleted list of facts about his life that he was a professor, that he had four kids, that he enjoyed a competitive match of croquet and on the other were photos of him and his family.
What the posters could not capture was his baritone voice and its Australian accent, the bounce in his step, or why people always felt comfortable coming to him with their problems. They could not capture the hyperactive kid who found his way from a cattle yard in Australia to a biochemistry lab in Lawrence.