Obituary & Eulogy

This is, without a doubt, the hardest speech I will ever have to give in my life. Which is funny, in a strange way, because if my brother had written this himself, it would have been one line. Austin Dadmun was an honorable man. That's it. That's all he ever wanted. And he told me that on multiple occasions. But unfortunately for him, I like to talk, and I have a lot of opinions about that. I want to be clear my brother was an honorable man but he was so much more than just that.

He was a stubborn man, probably the most stubborn man. There was no way to convince him to change his mind once he'd made it up about anything and the more you'd question him the deeper in he'd dig his heels. He was convinced all the time that he was right, and he was a lot of the time, but I mean, when we were kids, you know to give you some idea he once rejected a hundred dollar cash bribe to try a mozzarella stick. That's commitment. And when he did like something he was equally stubborn: people, places, restaurants, even brands if he decided he liked them he would be their greatest advocates. I suspect he may have been single-handedly keeping the Harney & Son's tea brand in business. His love for certain places was also legendary. He had a particular affinity for several places in Nonantum, “the lake” down the street from here, Antoine's pastry shop, Eddie's, and D&A pizza, and he would happily champion anywhere any pub that properly served an Irish breakfast.

That same stubbornness also drove him to achieve a lot of greatness in his life. My brother was a mechanical engineer. One of his favorite quotes came from a game called Team Fortress 2, which I know some of you in here will understand, and the quote was "I'm an engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like 'what is beauty' because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems". Those of you familiar with that game will recognize that quote because my brother loved it but also because he actively played so much of it and was so varied in it in so many of his games which I will talk about in just a second. But from a young age he was fascinated absolutely fascinated with the way that things worked. When we were younger we had these books (that I'm sure they still make and I'm sure some of you have seen) that take everyday objects and blow them out, make them components, show the diagrams, the blueprints. And he actively would pour over those.

It's not uncommon for children to have imaginary friends. But what is a little more uncommon is that my brother's imaginary friend was a man by the name of Uncle Toolshop. And Uncle Toolshop had a million adventures, and my brother would go on and on about them as a young man (a very young man I guess I should say). If it could be built - a rocket, a submarine, anything - Uncle Toolshop had done it and there was a story about it and he was going to tell you that story. but in those stories my brother had created a vision for himself and he put that stubbornness of his to work to make it happen.

Mechanical engineering is widely considered to be one of the top 10 hardest majors you can pursue, but he did it, and he was so proud to be able to call himself a real engineer. I hope he knows how proud we were of him too. It's funny because looking back on it there was never really any doubt what he would be. We never questioned that he would be an engineer. We never doubted that he would do it when we were kids. He, like I mentioned, always loved blueprints. And in some ways you might think that comes with the territory of engineering but I think it came from somewhere else.

You see, my brother was also extremely artistic and to him mechanical and technical skill was a form of artistic expression and he found a way to work it into to everything he did. He also recognized and respected the skills of others, regardless of the subject matter. Whether watching Alton Brown's Good Eats or attending drag shows with my mother, he recognized and respected art in all of its forms. He was actually a very talented artist in his own right. He was committed to his special black wing pencils, and with them and a sketch pad, you never knew if he'd create a diagram of some machine or a doodle of characters from the media that he supported but you did know it would be detailed and would always be impressive.

Using those same skills, he also became quite a chef. His specialties were varied. One week he'd make chicken tikka masala, the next he'd be making his special version of chili, and every once in a while he'd make his extra special 12-hour sauce which he took special care to monitor all day and then he'd fill as many mason jars as he could and keep it frozen so that you'd always have sauce. I don't know what we needed all that sauce for but we always had it. He took special pleasure in baking - though anyone who's ever tried to bake anything versus cook anything understands that they are two very different art forms - and he put a truly unbelievable remarkable effort into making pie. He was always tinkering with recipes, trying small variations. The results were always spectacular. He would always make little tiny test versions of his pies and he'd hand them out to basically anybody who would take them from him. There was no surer sign of his love for someone than his delivery of a pie around the holidays. He also became a master with a grill; skills he developed out of necessity for his visits to the lake house in New Hampshire. For those who may not know, although I suspect everyone here does, one of my family's special places is a cabin on an island in Lake Winnipesaukee. It's a wholly unique place due in part to the fact that it has no electricity and no running water and that was arguably what made it so special to my brother.

We dubbed him the last mountain man. My family promoted him to what we called "Firemeister" because of his love for the fire pit, where he'd take care to build fires in such a way that they'd last as long as possible. And then, as he grew older, he looked for ways to share everything he loved about the place with anyone who could spare the time to visit. He learned to grill specifically so that he could make the special steak dinners that were something of a tradition up there. And as a side note, he was the only man I could imagine who would look at a house with a propane stove and a grill and go, "nah, I want to buy a cast iron slate and a temperature gun and cook eggs over a bonfire in the morning". But that was who he was. He did things his way, and he was always more than happy to explain why his way was the best way. Actually, he was more than happy to explain just about anything. He was so intelligent that sometimes it was hard to keep up with him.

Anyone who knows either of us know that we have spent a great deal of our time playing video games in our lives. But Austin's insatiable curiosity for games was just incredible. He didn't just play games to experience them or to experience their stories. He deconstructed them. He examined the code. He made his own modifications. And he was always looking for ways to share that knowledge with people online in forums or in multiplayer games. If you were among the privileged who got to hear him talk about his various playthroughs of games like Skyrim, Fallout, Stalker, or if you ever saw him work in Gary's Mod which he had literally tens of thousands of hours in, or if you were lucky enough to have actually played multiplayer games with him like Helldivers, or his obsession over the last few years a game called Palworld, then you already probably know more about that game than the people who made the game because he did and he was never satisfied unless he understood it all.

I could talk about my brother for hours. I could talk about our adventures. I could talk about our vastly different ways of assembling LEGOs. I could talk about our shared love of hot sauce. I could talk about his obsession with space and the physics of black holes, or his unique sense of style and his immediately-identifiable silhouette with his scally cap and mountaineering glasses. I could talk about his frustrations with bureaucracy and his fury at injustice. I could tell you about the little boy that I grew up calling "the Boogler" and the distinguished man that boy became, whom my mother called "Bunny". I could tell you all about his honorable deeds. But at the end of all of those stories, my brother Austin Dadmun was a loving man. He was a man of unrelenting care for the people and creatures in his world.

Never was that love more fully on display than for a little orange cat named Katie. I was very fortunate to have been able to witness my brother's love for Katie firsthand and it helped me to understand that underneath that gruff facade was an amazingly compassionate patient caring man who would have given anything for the well-being of who he loved. He showed that love differently to different people but it was there in every text message, every discord meme, every shared song, every game invitation, every gifted pie, and every "love you too, Will" at the end of our calls.

So yes, my brother was an honorable man, but he was so much more. And so it falls on us - the people who his life touched - to try and carry forth those traits which he so embodied and with the boldness that he carried them in his own life, because the world could use more people like him and his presence is already dearly missed.

As a final note, there's a quote that had special significance to both my brother and I that I would like to share. It comes from World of Warcraft and he loved it so much that he had it emblazoned on little plaques for both of us. The quote says:

"We have all been witness to terrible tragedies but we must not let them drag us to despair.
Instead hold those memories close so that one day we might find a reckoning."