I had the privilege of hanging out with Brian a few times building model cars. His eye for detail was amazing, rivaled only by his gentle nature and generous spirit. But what I remember most was an incident in Mr. Reed's sixth grade class at Lincoln Elementary School. Brian was always so soft-spoken that most of us didn't realize how smart he was. Mr. Reed probably knew and I suspect he wanted the rest of us to know, so we had a spelling bee. We might have had other spelling bees -- I don't remember. But I remember this one because it came down to Brian and Mr. Reed as the two finalists. The competition was fierce. They were both spelling words way beyond average sixth grade vocabulary. Eventually, Brian emerged victorious by spelling supercalifragilisticexpialidocious -- backwards!