Homage to Dan by Ed Cerutti, read at memorial service, UNAM, Iztacala, 27 July, 2011

Created by Cecily 12 years ago
I am Edward, Daniel Ceruttiā€™s elder brother. We were four years apart, but we grew up very close. We roomed together and did almost everything together. Our family is intensely creative, and Dan inherited that trait. Anything he did, whether drawing, painting sculpting or modeling was a wonder to behold. Nothing he did was ordinary. There was nothing common about his abilities. He began as a young man to pursue a career in art, but he felt that his teachers were too constraining. So he left school to work for an engineering company. He taught himself how to do surveying and traveled all over the country. All of us in the family knew that this was a temporary trade. He was simply too creative to do this for the rest of his life. Then a chance meeting turned him towards behavioral psychology. He rocketed up through the academic ranks and obtained his doctoral degree. He took a number of interesting assignments and loved to tell us about his challenges working with apes. He was passionate about his field and his students. We were not completely surprised when his students often rated him the best professor in his department. His life became complete when he met Rosa. He was thrilled to have her in his life and together they raised two boys: Manuel and Gio. He re-lived his boyhood with them as they shared many of his passions with modeling and anything to do with airplanes. Those boys meant a lot to him. He is gone now. But he left a wonderful legacy with all of us whose lives he touched. His sense of passion, desire to learn, and love for others will always remain with us. He lives in our hearts.