Remembering Will White by Mark Mosher

For the engineer who reached for the stars and never forgot where he came from

He introduced himself as an autodidact — a word as rare and precise as the man who wore it. Straight out of Renaissance High, he was the best of Detroit and a mind like his could not be contained.

He could build a computer from scratch.
 He could build a world.

From University of Michigan to Silicon Valley,
 he reached for the stars — literally — designing the power supplies for nanosatellites arcing through the skies. Will created with precision and care and a kind of quiet magnificence.

He loved Detroit and never forgot it.
 Detroit House moving through him,
 Jamaaladeen Tacuma’s bass finding the groove between what is and what could be.


Will found that groove too.
 He lived in it.

He was a renaissance man
 who needed no era to define him.

He was steeped in politics, passionate about justice —
 not loud, not self-announcing,
 but present.

He listened.

Despite a mind that could calculate the trajectory
of a satellite through low Earth orbit,
 he chose instead to remember your birthday,
 ask about your family,
 tend to the thing that kept you up at night.

That was his greatest invention —
 the engineering of love.

The nanosatellites still circle.
 The bass still drops somewhere in a Detroit ballroom.
 The stars he reached for are still there.

And so is he —
in every person who felt, for once,
 truly seen.

Gentle giant. Beautiful mind. Boundless, loving heart.
 Will White. One of a kind.
 There will not be another.

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