This weekend, Seattle lost a very beloved member of its music and arts community, and more heartbreakingly, a little girl lost her father and a wife lost her husband. My friend Andy Kotowicz was killed in a horrific car accident in the neighborhood we both lived in, Ballard. Andy and I weren't close, by any stretch, but we played poker together a couple times a year for the last several years with a group of mutual friends, and I always enjoyed his company, his sense of humor, and talking about having daughters around the same age.
I'm going to paste a bit of what our good friend Chris Jacobs wrote on the SubPop blog, where Andy worked for over a decade:
Last Thursday evening, October 21st, driving his young daughter Anna home after picking her up from daycare, our co-worker Andy Kotowicz was involved in a terrible car accident that, so incredibly sadly, proved fatal. In what qualifies as nothing short of miraculous and definitively heroic, his daughter was pulled from the remains of the car, while it was on fire, by a local business owner who witnessed the accident. Though this same person tried and was unable to rescue Andy, I can think of no greater favor to our friend than saving his daughter's life. And, in some small measure of thanks, we will all be eating as many Rizzo's French Dip sandwiches as we can hold for a very long time. "Thank you" seems ridiculously inadequate, but thank you. Thank you.
Andy was under care at Harborview Medical Center in a coma until Saturday evening when he was taken off life support in the company of his immediate family. He was an organ donor and a recipient for his kidneys was found very soon after his passing. This is a small indication of the kind of guy he was.
Anna suffered some bruises and a broken arm, but is now home with her mother and family and is, we are told, recovering and adapting. There is a lesson here about the resilience and redemptive powers of children that we can all hope to learn from.
You can read the full post HERE, which goes into more detail about what kind of a universally beloved guy Andy was. I hope you will.
In the meantime, I also hope you might consider supporting Andy's wife and daughter as they struggle with what is going to be a very difficult climb for them.
A Sound Community Bank account is now available to accept donations for Andy Kotowicz's family.
Please make checks payable to the Andy Kotowicz Family Foundation
They can be mailed here:
Andy Kotowicz Family Foundation
c/o Sub Pop Records
2013 Fourth Ave, 3rd Floor
Seattle, WA 98121
Or checks can be delivered to Sound Community Bank at one of the locations listed here:
http://www.soundcb.com/home/cu/loc
Still further…
Andy supported the organizations below. You might like to do the same.
WFMU:
https://www.wfmu.org/marathon/pledge.php
The Greening of Detroit:
http://www.greeningofdetroit.com/
R.I.P., Andy.