Bravo, Wyngard, bravo!

Why does a science writer make a tribute to a celebrity like Wyngard Tracy? Because science writers thrive on feedback from readers like him who were so removed from the sciences, yet had taken such an interest in the quest to understand. Like everyone else too, we are “bred” to have a certain slant of mind that certain people in our lives played big roles in shaping. Wyngard did not merely play a role in mine, he made a deep wondrous hole — like a crater created by a crashed meteor. I rarely write about my personal life as a way of writing a science column but there are very few instances when there is no other way. This is one of them.

Wyngard was an icon in the entertainment industry but to me, he, together with my father, formed the singular window in the very intellectually insulated childhood in which I was raised. By an accident of nature, Wyngard and I found ourselves related — my mother being his sister. He found me quite annoying as a child since he said I would never stop asking questions but as I grew up, we became close and he became my confidant. We both enjoyed discussions about a myriad of things and he never got upset when we did not agree on our conclusions. Twenty years ago, when I made the most important decision to take charge of my own life and just be me, amid overwhelming opposition and doubt from the entire clan, he simply said “you seem to be really sure” and got up very early in the morning to bring me to the airport.

Wyngard could have been perfectly happy without having to understand things scientifically but he said it made all the difference in his life that he tried. He had been my weekly feedback ever since I started writing the columns over eight years ago. It is only now that I was told that every Thursday morning, he would have his assistant, Nida, cut my column to be placed on his desk as the first thing he would read. And then he would text all his showbiz friends to read my column which most of them now tell me they only did because they were scared that he would quiz them.

I would get regular calls from him when he would put me on speakerphone for his other friends to hear as he asked me questions like “Could you explain where sand comes from?” or “how does nature make wind?” or when he was admiring the beach, he would ask me to explain to him how oceans began. Once, we were together on a lovely beach when I urged him to look through the telescope so he could see Saturn. He was enjoying his dinner then and resisted but I asked him repeatedly to please look. So begrudgingly, he did. After he looked through, he said he was unimpressed by Saturn and expected more. Trust Wyngard to demand more “presence” even from a planet way over a billion kilometers away.

He was a perfectionist and maybe this is why when I started writing science, it appealed to him. I think it is because he correctly saw science as a discipline that keeps on “fixing” itself in terms of coming up with better and better explanations for how things work or why things are the way they are. He had a mind that was expansive. I really suspect that he had 10 other ears and eyes hidden somewhere in his entire body aside from the pairs that appear in normal humans. This is because he seemed to be able to give full attention to everything he was doing, even if this meant 10 different things happening all at once. I once asked him if he would be willing to be a volunteer so scientists could look at his brain and see what goes on in there when he is being “Wyngard” — perfecting, and honing his craft. He even asked me once to find out how he could get on those private space tours after I wrote about them.

Wyngard found my craft a curious and exciting thing which surprised me at first because I thought he only took to glamorous and splashy stuff in show business. Once when we both found ourselves in New York, I told him I had an appointment to interview a famous physicist and I explained to him why I wanted to interview him. After patiently listening to me and asking a few questions, he lapsed into being an uncle taking care of his niece and said, “Here is some money, I think you should get rid of that T-shirt and buy a really nice dress when you interview him.” I bought books instead and when I told him later, he said, “I knew that.” When I launched my first book, Science Solitaire, almost this same time four years ago, more than anyone else, I wanted him to be there. And he was there — bigger than life Wyngard — getting more copies than anyone else which I think he forced his friends to read. Last Friday, I launched my second book, Twenty One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire: Measure and Meaning. He could not be there because his body was already failing him. But I gave him a copy long before the launch.

“Twenty-one Grams…” is a collection of essays about how we measure things and what it could all mean. In the essay that carries the title of the book, I asked “How do we measure the worth of our lives? I guess by living and living with all that we are — defeating math with the very weight of life.” My Tito Wyngard trumped all the measures of being human. Wyngard was 58 but he was not defined by his generation. He had friends in every generation and was curious about what was important to them.

No one could fully define him, not a column, not his family, not his friends. He lived with the gravitas — the weight of passion and dedication to living fully — that touched everyone, even those he even only brushed against.

In all the science studies of happiness I have ever come across and reviewed, there was only one thing that had to be in the formula — that in life, we should “live deep and suck out all the marrow in life” — in order to know and feel what really matters. Thank you, Tito for showing, beyond words, beyond a column, what the weight of life means.

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