from Becky Miller Sykes '73 …

Good morning, family and friends. Four years after his cancer diagnosis, Elwin passed away this morning at 3:17 AM at New York Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Although there were many promising and not-so-promising treatments, ultimately the disease was too aggressive and pervasive for him to survive. He remained hopeful until his admission to the hospital 10 days ago that he would be able to squeeze out a few more good weeks, allowing him more quality time with beloved grandchildren Otis, Biko and Manu. He cherished his role as "cool papa el" and Abuelo and loved every handmade card, game of checkers and bedtime story. Encounters with grandchildren were always therapeutic. Becky and Elwin in 2013

Over the course of last Wednesday and Thursday, our sons and their partners were all in Brooklyn. Elwin was moved to tears at the sight of Emmett, Eliot and Emerson and their partners (Tahia, Ruth and Natasha, respectively). Because he was in comfort care, the hospital even allowed a brief visit from Manu (3). Elwin rallied enough on Friday morning to ask the doctors for ice cream, but very quickly his ability to communicate declined and over the last 3 days he was largely unresponsive.

Elwin and I would have celebrated our 53rd wedding anniversary on December 27. My high school sweetheart is no longer physically with me, but his spirit will live on in my heart and soul, in our sons, their partners and our precious grandchildren. When you think of him, think of jazz, photography, bowties, well-made cocktails, praline cheesecake, literature, travel and devotion to family. These are what he left behind. (Listen to "To Leave Something Behind".)

from Jeff Laurenti …

Elwin was born 16 days before me in January 1950. Shreveport, Louisiana, was a rather different kind of place than my hometown of Trenton, New Jersey, though we would both arrive wide-eyed in Cambridge as outsiders trying to find our place. He was graduated from Booker T. Washington High School -- the very name a reminder of Southern realities through mid-century. He did freshman year at Dillard University in New Orleans, a higher-tier HBCU, and was urged by an instructor there to shoot for the moon and apply as a transfer to Harvard, based on the well-known corollary of advanced probability theory that if you never apply to Harvard, you are certain not to get in. Elwin was one of the rare transfer applicants to be admitted, and our lives have been intertwined since.

During Christmas break after our graduation, while he was working on a masters in the English department at Harvard, he married his high school sweetheart Rebecca Miller (now Sykes), who was 2 years behind us in Cambridge, taking her from the Quad to Peabody Terrace. M.A. in hand, he then taught English literature for many decades at Phillips Academy in Andover. (Yes, we all thought Elwin's -- and then Becky's -- teaching there symbolized a delicious upending of the old social order.)

Elwin took leaves of absence from elite secondary education to do education stints back in Shreveport and in Chicago, powerful reminders of America's persistent challenges well after the dismantling of Jim Crow. He retired from schooling (but not from learning) over a decade ago and became actively immersed in grandparenting. His three sons Emmett, Eliot (my godson), and Emerson have all found life's mates, and since Emerson was the first to sire a new Sykes generation, Elwin and Becky made the post-retirement move from Massachusetts to Brooklyn to be close to their first grandchildren.

Elwin and Becky accompanied us to Italy in 2000, and twenty years later we were plotting a shared return there when Covid intervened. Before the pandemic had passed, he was found to be harboring a nasty and aggressive cancer. He has endured four hard years of treatments, many of them "experimental," few of them efficacious, and all of them enervating. (As his sons' names suggest, Elwin had a thing for an alliterative "E".)

from Peter Bernhard …

Elwin and I met on the baseball field sophomore year. He came to Las Vegas with me after junior year to help with the Upward Bound program at UNLV, and Rebecca joined us there after they married 53 years ago. The Sykes family was surrogate family for our son when he was at Harvard in the 1990s, and though separated geographically, we enjoyed many visits, calls, texts and exchanges over the years. I treasure his custom CD mixes of the best jazz, and his Sazerac was masterful. His love of poetry, literature, and great writing endures with his naming his sons Eliot and Emerson after two of his favorites, TS and Ralph Waldo. For you baseball fans, you’ll understand that he was most proud of being known to his grandkids as “Cool Papa El.”