In Memoriam
Roland Mochary
Roland Mochary
1964 graduation
Roland died in October 1999 from cardiomyopathy. Roland entered Yale with the Class of 1963 but graduated with our class. Ian Robertson '63 offered a warm and admiring appreciation of his good friend, in which he said that Roland "was consumed by art. He has left behind a vast treasure of sketchbooks, drawings, paintings, and sculpture prized by the cognoscenti. A twinkle has vanished from our firmament."
Remembrance
by Jeremy Wood, '64
read at our 40th Reunion
June 4, 2004
Zorba came upon an old man planting an apricot seedling and asked
why he, an old man, was planting a new tree. "I live as though I
would never die," was his reply.
"And me, I live as though I might die tomorrow," said Zorba, "which
one of us is right?"
Roland Paul Mochary, aka "Moch" as I knew him at Yale Architecture
School, lived his life big, bold and loud.
He was a party animal often given to kicking up his heels a la Zorba, fueled
by retsina and moving more like a force of nature, a mischievous dancing
bear who greeted unsuspecting friends with rough bone-crunching hugs and/or
bruising tweaks on the cheeks.
Yet Moch was capable of some of the most delicate renderings, the best
designs and models produced by our class, a rare "natural talent".
Moch departed architecture school after two years. I lost track of him until
he reappeared at our Twentieth Reunion, now as an artist, a creator of
paintings and whimsical sculptures.
Peter Dominick, Class of 1963, Moch's roommate and old friend, puts it as
follows:
"Moch was a brilliant original thinker, a gifted artist, a great lover of
women and life. He had no tolerance for convention and as such he remained
free of much of society's restraints. He was loved by his friends, charmed
us all in one way or another with his insights, his humor, and his
irreverence, but mostly by his art ― work that reverberated with joy, humor
and a natural gift to communicate."