RIP Laoshu505000
I’m actually a couple of days late on posting this, but besser spät als nie, as they say. Moses “Laoshu” M. McCormick, polyglot and YouTuber from Akron, Ohio, has passed away due to heart complications, according to what his sister wrote on GoFundMe. This is very sad news, since Laoshu was only forty or so when he passed. Several members of the polyglot community have already expressed their condolences, such as Michael Campbell of Glossika (on FB), Xiaomanyc, and Benny Lewis.
Some may not know that I actually appeared with Laoshu in a video, which was filmed when he visited Fort Wayne to meet the Burmese community. I provided the Burmese subtitles for that video and planned to provide subtitles for a lot more footage that was shot in Fort Wayne. I never actually got around to subtitling it all, regrettably. I suppose I have some of the raw footage on one of my old hard drives, so I could dig it out some time, if I remember to do so.
Laoshu’s death reminds me of the death of another person who appeared in the aforementioned video. The mutual friend of Laoshu and I: Wilson Tong. Wilson, like Laoshu and I, was passionate about learning languages. He was a kind and intelligent man who was still in his first year of residency after finishing med school in Cincinnati. Wilson was integral in helping me improve my Burmese because, shortly before he passed, he bought several Burmese language books in Yangon for me and passed them on to Laoshu before his death. I picked up those books at his funeral, which was held at the Mon Buddhist temple in Akron Ohio.
So, thank you, Laoshu and Wilson, for being a small part of my language learning journey. Thanks for the memories and I send my heartfelt condolences to the McCormick family during this time.