Craig and I became friends at Colorado College, and we were friends ever since. I was Keith Nielsen back then, but I changed my name to Keith Enevoldsen after I married Julie Enevoldsen, whom I also first met at CC. One year, six of us were dorm suite mates: Craig, Norv, Ethan, Ron, Keith, Frank. Craig was interested in lots of subjects but eventually majored in physics, like me. Three of us (the Troika) teamed up to compete for the monthly mathematics "pizza problems" and we won some pizzas. Craig was also on a trivia bowl team with three of us. Craig was a lot of fun to be around. When crossing a street, he could hurdle the hood of a parked car rather than walking around it. With his long legs he could walk fast and pass me while I was jogging. While grocery shopping, Norv would grab items off the shelf and blindly lob them over his shoulder (even breakable items), trusting in Craig's agility to lunge and snag the items out of the air to place them safely in the shopping cart. A road trip with Craig in his Chevy Blazer was always an adventure. I tagged along with him on some hunting and fishing trips. Ron can tell the story of the road trip to Texas that landed the three of them in jail for the night. Or Julie can tell about the road trip in which we went to swim with the fishes at Balmorhea pool, and the fact that it was closed and fenced didn't stop us.
Craig and I both had careers at Boeing. We never worked in the same group, but our work-life paths would occasionally cross, which was always enjoyable. I, along with many thousands of other Boeing employees all over the country for many years, would often, sometimes daily, use Craig's remarkably convenient little "Dynamic Org Chart" app. Craig was the elected president of SPEAA, the Boeing engineers' union, during the 2000 strike, the country's largest white-collar strike. I was one of the software engineers on the picket line. He (like many of us) did not vote to strike, but when the membership did vote to strike, Craig was committed to helping make the strike be effective. Craig was well suited for the role of union president: he cared about people and fairness, he was level-headed and could see the issues from all viewpoints, and he knew how to interpret data so he could rationally balance alternative proposals.
My family (Julie and I, our children, and recently our grandchildren) saw Craig a couple times each year, at our winter solstice cookie parties or birthdays or outings for birding and/or star gazing. He joined us camping in Oregon for the total solar eclipse of 2017 -- he enjoyed the birds as much as the eclipse. He was always fun to talk to: he had lots of funny stories, lots of interesting ideas, and he always wanted to hear what everyone else wanted to tell. On birthdays he would ask the birthday celebrant what was the most significant thing that happened to them in the last year and what were they most looking forward to in the next year. It is a thoughtful question that brings out the best in people.