How I Met My Dead Parents

In 1994, when I was 16 and he was 54, my father George was killed in a car accident in Ukraine. He'd begun working in Ukraine, where he was born, after Communism fell, something that he didn't think would ever happen in his lifetime. He considered helping his homeland an honor and an obligation, so after a long career in international banking in the Middle East and Africa, he happily went "home" to set up the country's first central bank and then stayed to work as a venture capitalist. He'd spend roughly four to six weeks in Ukraine at a time before returning to his other home in Boston, where my mother, my sister, and I lived, in a brick townhouse on a quiet street near the Charles River. He hoped that sooner rather than later, he'd be able to run his operations from Boston so he could be with us, but those plans were cut short. Late one night, when he was being driven home from the Kiev airport, his driver was blinded by a truck speeding toward them in the same lane. His driver lost control of the car, swerved into the truck, and my father and the other passengers died instantly.

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