Rachel Sherman ’15

Dear Mr. Huppe and Mrs. Lewis,

It’s taken me a while to write this, because I cannot put into words how much Ben meant to me. He was one of my best friends at Mudd, and I don’t know how I would have survived last year without him. There are so many little memories, too many to list, that made Ben such an incredible, unforgettable friend, and an irreplaceable mentor. But here are a few of the things that come to mind when I think about Ben.

Ben and Anita and I couldn’t walk anywhere together without someone else there to keep us moving forward, lest we end up running in circles trying to tickle one another from behind. We christened ourselves “The Three Muske-ticklers,” and one of us, usually me, would always end up on the ground, and all three of us would always end up laughing and smiling, no matter how much work we had to get done, no matter how badly our day was going. I remember the three of us watching episodes of Pokemon in my suite, and falling asleep in a pile on my couch, Anita and I on either side of Ben, because he was always unusually warm and we were always cold, and Ben complaining, with a smile on his face, that having us there was making him too hot.

One night during Sontag’s weekly showing of Good Eats, I was struggling to finish my CS homework in time, and Ben and Kate came into the lounge. They had just finished something they had been working on, and I remember looking up from my CS and just watching the two of them as they grinned at each other and repeated a few of their jokes that we had heard them repeat time and time again. It may not seem like the most memorable of moments, but I just remember how happy looking at the two of them made me. Because as long as Ben and Kate were smiling and laughing and happy, you couldn’t help but smile and be happy and believe everything was okay.

Second semester, I struggled a lot with physics. I spent the nights before problem sets were due frustrated and upset, and I struggled with every new concept we learned. Professors and classmates would try to explain something to me over and over again, and then eventually give up. But not Ben. I remember him spending hours trying to go through a problem with me, taking a scooter and showing me the motion of the wheel, and taking me through things step by step. It didn’t matter that it was 2 am, or that he wasn’t in the class – I needed help, so he was there. I never told anyone at Mudd this, but there were a lot of nights that I thought I had chosen the wrong school, despite how much I loved the people at Mudd. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to get through physics. I felt like I wasn’t smart enough to be at Mudd. But then Ben would talk to me. He would come find me when I was upset and give me a pep talk, encourage me to get help from professors, give me a hug, and bring me back to the lounge. Having Ben there, believing I was capable of getting through physics, asking me: “What have you got?” until I replied “This,” and meant it, made the workload survivable.

Ben was the person I went to if I needed help, whether it was with physics, room draw, or really anything at all. He was the person I sought out if we needed more people to play a game on a Friday night (although to be honest, Ben and I were usually the ones hunting down people to play games). He was the sophomore who appeared in the lounge with frozen salsa the second or third week of school, and then left me unable to remember ever hanging out in the lounge without him. He was the person who made Sontag lounge the home that it is to so many of us. All of us at Mudd, and especially those of us in Sontag, where Ben was such an integral part of the community, will miss him immensely, and I know I can speak for all of the Sontag frosh when I say we’re never, ever going to forget him.

Sincerely,