My brother, Louis J. Izzo, Jr.  (Louie) passed away November 13, 2014, three weeks before graduating from nursing school. A top student in his class, he epitomized the power of the unbreakable spirit and the quotation by Winston Churchill, “Never, Never, Never Give Up.”  He was 61 years young.

He understood that you have to throw away the excuse bag. He had this innate ability to rise above his challenges with a pit bull determination and focus and encourage others in the process.

How do you describe my brother. He was certainly one of a kind…a warrior, a vortex of energy in constant motion comes to mind.

He was a Fifth Degree Black Belt, an avid cyclist…I think he loved his Giant Bike more than anything, He was a top achiever in anything he set his mind to.

As I was going through his computer I found this story he wrote about himself.

THE COMEBACK KID

As a young man, before I entered the academic arena and started sparring with knowledge, blissful ignorance was an accurate description of my state of mind. Nobody in my family and my surroundings had gone beyond a high school education, and quite a few didn’t make it out of grammar school. Education was something that I started dreaming about after my first encounter with Dr. Marcus Wellby . His level of compassion and his ability to cure all his patients in his weekly TV show was comparable to an Italian mother with a license to practice medicine. Wow, was I impressed. A seed was planted in my brain of seven years, with no place to go but grow, and grow and grow. I carried this seed until I was thirty-six years old that eventually grew into a garden of roses. I applied to St. Pete College, only to find out that I was a semi-illiterate, my score on the entrance test was one of the lowest in the history of the school. I was so disheartened to see my dream of three decades fade into the sunset. Could one test have such power, I asked myself. I made my decision to plow forward, regardless of the outcome, and forward I went.

I started with a chemistry course with determination and endurance, and studied until my pupils changed color. Now, with many years of academic study behind me, I learned to carefully watch my surrounding and to associate myself with the most brilliant minds in all my classes. They mapped out my path up and around the mountain of knowledge, and without knowing, I discovered something that would not be invented for twenty years, the GPS system. My peers taught me to attack each and every subject, like a male lion, protecting his pride. Graduating with honors was my pride of female lions. The rest is ancient history.

Since I started the art of learning at a late age, and being a day late and a dollar short with the proper background and formulas needed for success, my style unfortunately has some flaws. I had, until recently no knowledge of any subject in school, computers being the most foreign and the most challenging. I went from not knowing how to turn the computer on and how to log in, to doing this assignment on my own in a short time. In conclusion, I utilized like a fighter the tools that were at my disposal, perseverance, discipline, endurance and a Marine Corps attitude “Never, Never Quit.”

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The day before he died, my stepdaughter Miriam Rose and I had lunch with my brother in St. Petersburg at Bella Brava, we had dessert and coffee at Cassis and spent the whole afternoon with him…That day was a blessing and, he paid!!!!

The life lesson and legacy my brother left us… Everyday is a gift…Nurture and love your family and friends AND, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP!

To live in hearts left behind is not to die for the void we are feeling is filled with beautiful memories.