i met ira at school in 2000,we were to be class mates for the next 2 years.he had been preparing a few years for his education at school and i was a last minute entry,and let me tell you it was apparent right off bat "for the both of us"..he was a stiff and i was loud .obnoxious,unprepared and totally over my head...HA! what a pair...the first semester is dedicated to fundamentals and drawing ,Ira had taken the summer course so he was way ahead of me,his tools,drawing kit,sharpening system and all the other cool stuff he had was ....PERFECT!...and he cruised through his drawing like a master draftsman..he sat right in front of me..and didnt say much to me....whatever....now me on the other hand....i came into school never being exposed to any of this stuff ...at all...i came off a construction site and a long tough unsuccessful rehab attempt on my shoulder..i had been excepted 6 weeks before the start of the program...HA ...all my stuff was a mess,unorganized,old and my drawings looked like hell (because i am a lefty and I SUCK) and was dead last completing the drawings...oh yeah ..i was wicked loud too! blah blah blahen it all day long...and i was always copying off of Ira drawings...he didnt like it at all...one day he finally talked to me....mostly to tell me to stop copying off of him and do my own work...he really laid into me..and i was like "dude what do you care if i look at your drawings"...HAHAHA..he must have been like ..2 years of this kid ....one thing about ira was he spread out all over the place...mostly in my area...at the same time in the morning ..every morning for 2 months he would make his tea..like clock work...without me knowing.he put his tea on my drafting table ..i was still drawing ...and all of a sudden this tea came pouring down my drafting table....i looked up and Ira was standing there and yelled "look what you made me do"...i just laughed at him and said...what..are you kidden me..? i didnt do shit...i gave him an earful for always putting his stuff all over the my section .i helped him clean the mess and cracked a few jokes about him (in general) just his way was wicked funny to me..and he had a wicked quick witted response to every thing i said ..and we cracked each other up for what seemed to be an hour...ever since that day me and ira were like 2 kids on a field trip at school learning everything we could about woodworking..we always worked side by side for 2 years we had benches next to each other..Ira was a great thinker and built by the numbers off his drawings and i was the opposite i banged through stuff and scribbled on wood...but we helped each other the entire time at school....ira was a great furniture maker...no kidding...he was great ...and he was a great friend .always helping me when ever i needed it..mostly in life...he was more than a friend to me..he was a man i hoped to be like one day...ira carried himself as a humble .kind,helpful gentleman...i never herd a bad thing said about him ..and i expect i never will....the step stool we build..he drew..its his...he was kind enough to give me his drawing and when i told him about the fine woodworking article...he had fun turning the screw on me calling me a rip off and a fake ...just like the days we met...he will be missed

On a Friday in June 2000, Dr. Ira Richer retired from a career in computer networking, which spanned four decades. By the following Monday, he had enrolled as a student in cabinet and furniture making at North Bennett Street School in Boston’s North End.
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“That was typical of him; he never wasted time,’’ said his wife, Kari-Lise.

Dr. Richer, a retired electrical engineer, died June 14 at his home in Boston’s North End of neuroendocrine cancer. He was 70.

Despite a distinguished résumé of accomplishments, Dr. Richer’s woodworking education was one of his proudest achievements, his wife said.

“People said he was such a relief to work with because there was no ego,’’ she said. “He just appreciated hard work, no matter who you were or where you were. Frankly, I think that’s hard to find today.’’

A native of the Bronx, N.Y., Dr. Richer graduated at age 17 in 1955 from Bronx High School of Science. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1959.

The summer after graduating, Dr. Richer drove across the country to begin work on a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He completed his master’s of science degree in 1960 and a doctorate in electrical engineering there in 1964.

In 1963, he attended an international student party, where he met Kari-Lise Nilssen, a native of Norway working as an au pair to a German family.

Upon graduation, Dr. Richer received a North Atlantic Treaty Organization Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Technical University of Denmark and traveled there with Nilssen. In January 1965, the couple married in Denmark, and a year later, their first child, Mark, was born in Norway.

“I think he was, as a family man, the same way he was in his professional life,’’ his wife said, “extremely reliable, kind, accepting, and understanding.’’

In 1966, the family left Denmark for California, where Dr. Richer returned to Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow.

The following year, they moved to Lexington, and Dr. Richer joined the professional staff at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked on national defense projects such as the development of a low-frequency method for communicating with deeply submerged submarines.

In 1976, Dr. Richer joined the Cambridge computer technology consulting firm Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, now known as BBN Technologies, where his work focused on design and analysis of complex data communication systems and networks for military, government, and commercial clients.

At BBN, he was part of a three-person team, along with John McQuillan and Eric Rosen, which in 1978 developed a new technique for routing data through a communication network - at that time, it was Arpanet, a precursor to the Internet - according to his son, Mark of Las Cruces, N.M.

While at BBN, Dr. Richer also spent two years working and living with his family in northern Italy as a consultant to Olivetti, Italy’s leading computer company on the design and implementation of a countrywide banking network in Denmark.

Dr. Richer also took advantage of his surroundings, hiking the Italian Alps and cultivating a great love for Italian food, his son said.

While in Italy, Dr. Richer also struck up a friendship with Alex McKenzie of Gloucester, a colleague from the Cambridge firm who also spent time in Italy consulting for Olivetti.

“Ira was a very smart guy, very soft spoken, but he had the ability to size up clients’ situations and see solutions, often unique solutions, to their problems,’’ McKenzie said.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Richer worked for MITRE Corp. in Bedford, supervising a small group working on advanced networks and applications. Then he joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, at the Department of Defense, in 1988 as a program manager for high performance networking.

Dr. Richer joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives in Reston, Va., in the early 1990s. While at CNRI, he played a large role in preparing for the Y2K conversion and coordinated the MAGIC project, which gave computer systems the capability to use large volumes of stored data, even if the hardware storing the data needed to be moved in such events as natural disasters or military operations, his family said.

Dr. Richer was a longtime member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a professional association.

He was also was an avid traveler and hiker.

In addition to his wife and son, Dr. Richer leaves a daughter, Elise of Portland, Maine; two grandsons; and a granddaughter.

After reading your first post and the obit link, I did some Googling and recognized some of the papers that he wrote while active in the IEEE (I've been a member for 26 years). I remember reading some of those in college while casting about for a research project in grad school!

Sorry for your loss.

Tommy,

My condolences on the loss of your friend Ira. I can tell from your post that you two, although different personality types, both had a passion for high quality woodworking and shared a mutual respect for each other and the joys of true friendship.

His memory will carry on with each build of the Ira Richer Step Stool.

Bruce

I am sorry to just now hear about your friend. I remember you mentioning him while I was in the shop. He seemed to live life with a passion. A lesson worth exemplifying.
I hope you are doing well.
Brian

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. It sounds like he accomplished alot.