Preston, Ross Sturgeon (PhD) Born December 19, 1939. A beloved and mischievous grandfather, a generous and thoughtful father, and a loving and devoted husband, Ross Sturgeon Preston died on Monday April 17, 2017. Anyone who knew Ross was struck by his physical strength and stamina, his intellectual curiosity and the depth and breadth of his knowledge, his quirky sense of humour, his love of the Big Rideau Lake, his strict moral compass and, most obvious of all, his deep lifelong love for Judy, his wife of 53 years. Married in 1963, Judy (nee Dulmage) and Ross were childhood sweethearts. As a young teenager, Ross and his summer buddies at the lake had pretended to fish off Judy’s parent’s Bluff Island cottage waiting for Judy and her cousins to notice them. It worked! Many dances at Rideau Ferry Inn and the Antler Lodge ensued. They wrote letters to each other for 8 long years and worked together at Merrywood Camp during university. Their lives together were, for their family, an example of how lifelong love endures through thick and thin. They were partners in every sense, and imparted to their family, quietly, lessons about love, trust and respect, honour and forgiveness, comfort and support, and always generosity. Ross had four delightful grandchildren, Seamus, Devlin, Eli and Adelaide and two children Elisabeth and Andrew (Rachel), each of whom were a joy to him. He was immensely proud of the intellectual curiosity and capabilities of his family, their many and broad accomplishments, and the fact that he could see himself in each of them, in many and varied ways. They each have that patented moral compass of his, and the love of the poetry of nature and other deep and meaningful gifts he made sure to quietly bestow. A graduate of University of Pennsylvania where his father and child also attended, Ross held a doctorate in economics and worked as a very well respected econometrician for major multinationals, governments, and think-tanks doing cutting edge research. He was a respected researcher and professor at Penn, MIT and Haverford College. Ross authored hundreds of articles, reports, and works in his field, was a guest commentator for television and radio, a frequent editorialist, invited or not. In later years, he was very engaged in research and critique of the economic policies affecting his community. A highly evolved statistician and mathematician, it was hard to argue facts with Ross, yet he was a most patient teacher. For those of us who really knew Ross, our Grampy, our dad, our partner, we knew that he was also a passionate music lover, an artist, a novelist, a poet, a dreamer. He wrote a full-length novel about a blind "seer” who worked as a cryptographer. He wrote poetry about Saturn. He would, literally, solve problems in his dreams, waking after a sleep with the answer to a complicated math equation, a method of fixing a mechanical conundrum, a solution to a perplexing issue. Who does this? Very special minds, with great depth and passion. Dreamers are often misunderstood, and Ross was no different. He might be staring off into space with a frown on his face but on the inside his mind had transported him into another place where great mysteries were solved, or at least where the answers to questions, large and small were possible. We have been grateful for the window into his world. Ross told us that when he died, he knew he would become stardust. There is no more fitting thought for his family than this. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation in Ross’ honour to The Table Community Food Centre, at https://www.thetablecfc.org/article/support-your-community-food-centre or by cheque to The Table, 190 Gore St. E. Perth, ON. K7H 1K3. A gathering to honour Ross with stories and music, and refreshments afterward, will be held at 10:30 am on Saturday April 22nd, 2017 at Blair & Son Funeral Home, 15 Gore Street West, Perth Ontario.