It's never a good day, when open your e-mail and the first thing that pops up are 3 e-mails with 2 words on the headers, and those 2 words are someone's name that you know is having the battle of their life.
In today's case, the 3 e-mails were from a friend and former co-worker of mine, sent to 3 of the various e-mail addresses I use and they all said the same thing on the header "Erik Purdom".
Erik was a great designer, mentor, and adventurer and will be sorely missed by all who knew him. He had been undergoing a battle with a rare stomach cancer, signet ring cell carcinoma. A very rare and aggressive form of stomach cancer
What to say about Erik, I never had the pleasure of working with him, but I did have the pleasure of spending a little time with him, although it was more of a social nature rather than work. My first meeting was in a job interview with the now defunct L.A. Gear athletic footwear company, which lives on under license. Had been meeting and interviewing with several people through out the day, and finally I get sat down in a conference room to interview with the designers. 3 guys come in, one of which was Eric, who was the Director of Design at the time. And I'm thinking "oh great, a panel interview, this will be fun - NOT"
And I sat, and looked at them, and they sat, and looked at me, and after about 20 seconds, I asked "Well, what do you want to know?" And Erik say "uh, no, what do YOU want to know?" And so the chat and chin wag was on the go. I didn't take the job at the time, but did wind up going there a couple of years later, Eric had left to start his own business, but a lot of the designers at Gear still kept in contact, with him, and he would stop by from time to time to pick up a couple of the design/development group to fly out to Catalina for lunch. The old hundred-dollar-hamburger.
And so the adventure for Erik continues, as his blog says, "probably putting together his next Big Thing"
"So long Erik, we hardly knew ye"
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