Page created by: Samir Mehta

In June of this year, we said goodbye to Ramesh Kevalchand Mehta, beloved husband, father, son, brother, uncle, friend, and a thousand more things, for the last time. He passed away at John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek, on a Saturday afternoon, June 3, at 12:46 PM. It was an otherwise beautiful day. Ramesh died just two weeks shy of Father's Day today. He was 78.

Ramesh passed peacefully with his wife Meenakshi Mehta (they were married just over 50 years), sons Samir Mehta and Nikhil Mehta, and close friend Govind Gupt at his side.

Many of you know this, but for those who do not, Ramesh was battling multiple long illnesses for much of the past decade. What began as a fight with bone issues moved to a fight with multiple myeloma and then to Parkinson's disease and the horrible symptoms that come with that.

Ramesh and Meenakshi fought so strongly and so bravely through all of this. As the diseases progressed, Meenakshi revealed depths of heroism and superheroism that are truly haunting. But that is not what we want to focus on, not today. As those who have lived through grief like this know, the circumstances of illness and death eventually start to fall away and we want to remember who the person was before the illness.

So, we want to tell you the story of Ramesh - for those of you who are reading this, this may be the last time you think of him and his life. He was an absolutely amazing man. Writing it now in full, even knowing the facts individually, shows this to us yet again. And in the final weeks and hours of his life, it is the same story we tried to tell him, to remind him of the amazing story and legacy he left behind. And honestly, if you never met him in his best years, we feel sorry for you. He was awesome. So for those of you unlucky ones, let us introduce him now.

Born to mother Shantaben Mehta (neé Koradia) and father Kevalchand Devchand Mehta on January 9, 1945, Ramesh was one of six children his parents had during those watershed years at the end of the British Raj and the rise of the new Indian nation. He was born in Mumbai (then Bombay) to a Gujarati Jain family.
Ramesh's family was of very humble means. His sister Nirmala died in her youth to disease and the family often struggled to get by. And for complicated reasons that we still do not fully understand (but which related to his mother's health, family finances, and the influence of his father's mother), Ramesh was sent to live with his grandmother (his father's mother), uncles, aunts, and cousins in Bengaluru (then Bangalore). He spent the bulk of his childhood away from his mother, father, and living siblings, all of whom were in Bombay. The distance from Bangalore to Bombay is just under 985 kilometers, but with the limitations of poverty and technology, it felt like so much more to him. He saw his direct family on holidays, but missed them all the time.
Life in Bangalore was actually no better than life in Mumbai. Although his grandmother loved him strongly and fiercely, life with his uncles was difficult. In the language of today, it would be impossible to deny that one uncle was particularly abusive verbally, emotionally, and perhaps physically. (These details were never fully explored by our family, but hinted at with great intent.) He was frequently reminded, in words and actions, that he was a nephew and not a son.
He did not have a bedroom, he often did not have a bed. He was made to work in his family's store, typically without pay. Although Ramesh was an assiduous student and reader, this was not always encouraged, with one uncle particularly mocking and criticizing reading. After Ramesh did his work around the store and the house, he would typically have to go outside to read his schoolbooks or other books by a street lamp. The image haunts - this was his childhood norm. (Years later, when he became a father, Ramesh would not hesitate to encourage his sons to read - he wanted robust curiosity. We are certain there was a direct connection to these experiences in his head.)
Life was hard, but he was a survivor. Literally! When he was a toddler, he was taken to his ancestral village of Kolki. At some point, he wandered off from his mother and she saw him on the roof of a house. And then he stepped off the edge and disappeared from view! We can only imagine her horror! But then she found him, and he was laughing on the ground, unscathed. Survivor.
And that little boy worked non-stop as a child and a teen. In those books he read by the streetlight, he discovered purpose and fortitude. Philosophers, especially Swami Vivekananda, gave him formidable willpower. And despite unpaid work in the family store, chores, and inconsistent support, he was a top student. For poor children in India then (as with poor children now and perhaps forever), the best way out of his circumstances was through schooling. With the Nehru government (and successors) pushing for education funding, there were great scholarships available to top universities in India, especially in the sciences. But, attendance in these universities, much less scholarships, was incredibly competitive.
He meant to be a doctor at first, as that was the clearest path to achieve a happy and stable life out of schools. But his grandmother learned that medical school involved dissection of animals, and perhaps vivisection! As a devout Jain, she immediately blocked this path. So he became an electrical engineer and the destiny of a family was changed as he would follow this new path into the emerging worlds of computing.
Ramesh studied electrical engineering at BIT (Bangalore Institute of Technology) where he was again a top student, graduating with a BSEE in 1967. Like so many talented Indians of this era, his life was shaped by two separate but related circumstances. In the United States, the government had just recently lifted racist and nationalist barriers on immigration with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, coming as a logical result of ongoing civil rights reforms. And while India had funded so much education so well, the economy of the fledgling nation could not absorb the talent of these new graduates. So, Ramesh quickly realized that the was his next home. The boy who lived a childhood almost one thousand kilometers from his family would next move 13,020 kilometers away! (Ramesh was deeply aware of the capricious nature of fate, and how legislation and policy made his life possible. In later life, he would see solidarity with immigrants and minorities, we think because of these experiences. He deeply admired people who were willing to work and travel for a better life, regardless of their place of origin.) But while he drifted farther from his family physically, they remained deeply in his heart.
Ramesh moved to the Pacific Northwest first in 1967, to get a Masters degree from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, and then a second degree from the University of Idaho. He obtained a Masters in Statistics and an MBA, seeing the value of going into business with a technical background – a path his sons would later tread. For the first few years in the Pacific Northwest and Idaho, Ramesh should have been a “stranger in a strange land” but if you knew Ramesh, he never met a stranger. Instead, he jumped in with both feet and learned both in the classroom and outside. He socialized with all of his classmates, with a special interest on fellow international students. He loved religion in all of its forms, and used his new freedom to take in the broad experiences of life. He went to mosques and synagogues and churches. He allegedly went to Woodstock (although this cannot be confirmed – he sometimes told tall tales.) He continued to have random setbacks including a horrible injury when he broke a femur on the Idaho ice, and was in traction for several months with few people around him, almost none he knew well. (He had never seen snow or ice until this period.) Survivor.
After graduate school, he moved to the northeast, where he moved between Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire as he began his career. By 1972, he had developed a strong career path and he was advised it was time to get married. So he went back to Mumbai in the fall, where he met the marvelous Meenakshi Mehta (neé Kamdar) through a mutual family friend (and matchmaker). In the period between “love” marriages of today and “arranged marriages” of years past, they had the ability to choose (from several options) and they picked each other. They were quickly wed in November, 1972, and spent a few weeks together before Ramesh headed back to the in December with Meenakshi following a few months later in February, 1973.
From photographs and limited memories, it is clear that Ramesh and Meenakshi were living their best lives in the immediate years afterwards. The little boy who was often underfed in Bangalore relished eating banana splits and exploring the new world he had access to. The beach, Quebec, and New England were favorite spots. Four years later, they started growing their family with Nikhil born on May 19, 1977. Three years later, Samir was born on September 15, 1980. Having achieved perfection this time, they saw no need for further children.
Ramesh’s experience as a dad was loving and passionate. We suspect that he wanted to make up for a lot of the tenderness, hugs, and kisses that he missed out on as a child, and he made up for that many times over.
On the professional front, his career skyrocketed beyond anyone’s expectations except perhaps his boundless ones. He rose to senior executive leadership at Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1970s and 1980s, when that company was the very vanguard of computing. Leading global marketing, he traveled the world and even got to all seven continents! He loved technology and the work he engaged in, and he loved seeing the future. Digital sold mainframe computers and software, primarily, but Ramesh saw the dawning personal computer revolution and wanted to guide the company to it. Unfortunately, conflicting opinions in leadership ranks undermined this. Sometime after this, and perhaps related to the failure to adjust, Ramesh decided to go into the world of entrepreneurship and moved into a series of technology companies, typically as CEO.
But, honestly, we don’t want to dwell too much on his career as much as he might like to. This has gone a while, and are forty more years to cover. I’ll move faster now.
The more amazing stuff wasn’t about his career – he loved his work and he was great at it, but the career was a byproduct of who he was as a person. He constantly sent money home to take care of his parents, often as their primary support. He helped countless relatives to visit and immigrate to the United States. His mind was curious and wide ranging. He loved learning about nuances of global affairs and how it affected people. That made him want to travel and share so many experiences with his family. We traveled across the country and world. We think he wanted his family to get all the things he did not have. We got to 47 states in the We got to go into Vatican City, behind the walls, to have lunch with an Ethiopian novice! He loved nature and plants and animals. The wide ranging topography of North America was just intoxicating to him – he relished mountains and waterfalls.
He loved engaging with his children on advanced topics. He debated the Reagan administration’s merits with his children as grade schoolers. He loved children. He really loved his grandchildren, Asha, Summer, Leo, Bennett, and Anika. He loved his family, his parents, his in-laws, his siblings and their spouses, his nieces and nephews. Even as he lost his mental abilities, he got immense joy in his last months and years just from seeing or talking to any of them, but especially his grandchildren.
He was also really, really silly. He made silly things up for the heck of it. He liked cheating in games, often just to exasperate people (especially his sons). He taught at Carnegie Mellon University because he loved talking to young people about life and careers. He loved being a mentor and support to people, and he took pride in that. He loved being a mentor and support to his sons the most. He loved Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which surprisingly became his longest home, a place where he made deep roots in the business community, the South Asian community, and the community at large.
He loved meeting anyone and everyone he could. After family and work, his greatest love was talking to new people about literally any topic. He would drink tea in villages with strangers and enjoy the conversation.
As we write this, we have alternately cried, laughed, and just smiled. He was so, so many things. And we will love him forever just through the way we live. And we am sure so many other people will as well. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. And honestly, you’re welcome – it was really great to know Ramesh and amazing to be his family. If he never met you, he would wish that he did. You should wish the same.
Happy Fathers’ Day, dad, you treasure of a human being.
We will miss you. We will never forget you.