I. Erik Orav ’75 died on April 22, 2012, in Guerneville, California.

(The following was provided by Obituary Registry in April 22, 2012:)

After more than a year fighting lymphoma, Ilmar Erik Orav died peacefully at his Guerneville home on April 22. He was 58. Born in New York City in 1953, Erik grew up in Valencia and Maracaibo, Venezuela. Summers were spent with his family and grandparents in New York. There he developed a lifelong interest for art galleries, museums and other cultural institutions. Erik matriculated at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1971, pursuing his passion for art history and with a knack for languages. He spent his junior year at La Sorbonne in Paris, studying art and film history. Erik was fluent in Spanish, French, Italian, and his parents’ native Estonian, a heritage of which he was exceptionally proud. His encyclopedic knowledge and love of Western, Asian, and tribal arts -as well as antiques and antiquities – served as vocation and avocation for the rest of his life. He was a talented artist, an avid collector of art and books, and loved to travel. After receiving a BA in Art History and Romance Languages from Bowdoin in 1975, Erik earned a BFA in Environmental Design from Parsons School of Design in New York City. Between 1979 and 1991 he held several positions in New York. These included serving as a sales/appraisal agent of fine French antiques for Charles J. Winston & Co.; an art consultant for the state of New York and for Hirschl & Adler Galleries; and as director of the Sid Deutsch Gallery, which specialized in 20th Century American art. In 1991, Erik moved from New York to San Francisco. He relocated to Guerneville in 1994 after receiving a position at Food for Thought (FFT), the Sonoma County AIDS Food Bank, where he worked until cancer overtook him in early 2011. He frequently volunteered at FFT as well, always willing to help with anything that needed doing. Erik served as interpreter for FFT’s many monolingual Hispanic clients. As a man living with HIV since the early 1980s, his wisdom, empathy, humor, and genuine caring comforted many clients, especially those for whom AIDS was still a stigma. While generous in sharing his own story, Erik was even better at lending an attentive ear to anyone – whether an FFT client, volunteer, or coworker – who just needed to talk. Erik’s background in art and antiques was an invaluable asset for FFT’s fundraising auctions: He played a major role in soliciting, selecting, evaluating and cataloging donations. In recent years he assisted J. Russell Wherritt – a founding benefactor of FFT and its auctions – in assembling an outstanding collection of fine Asian art. Erik also served as one of Russell’s caretakers until shortly before he died of Parkinson’s disease in April 2011. Erik began working at FFT Antiques in Sebastopol in 2010. Though he was a very private person, anyone who encountered Erik in public – be it long-time friend or new acquaintance – was immediately aware of his outgoing, caring nature, friendly intellect, and worldly knowledge. They were usually left with an indelible memory of his great wit and humor – sometimes dry, sometimes sarcastic, often a bit risqué. One of his FFT co-workers best captured Erik’s essence in a note to him not long before his death: “”I miss you – your wonderful laugh, your quirky sense of humor…. Anyone who meets you never forgets you. You made us all feel so special because you paid attention.”” He will always be missed, never forgotten. Erik is survived by his loving mother, Helle Orav-Reiman, of Palm Beach, Florida; his brother, Hiller Orav, of Jacksonville, Florida; his partner, Eric Keller, of Guerneville; and numerous friends and relatives in Sonoma County, San Francisco, Vermont, Hawaii, New York, and Estonia.