"When we lose anyone, we lose part of ourselves," said Stuart Naismith at Friday's memorial service for Binghamton University Professor Richard Antoun.
Antoun spent Fridays with friends, meeting the guys at Binghamton's Park Diner.
"Whenever I said something to him, he would look me in the eye, and I'd get the feeling that he really cared what I had to say, or he thought that what I had to say might even be important," said friend George Haeseler.
One week ago Friday was the last time the group would be complete, all parts assembled for brunch and Antoun's favorite -- Boston cream pie.
This Friday, their normal table was empty. Antoun's friends gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church to pay their last respects.
"I will miss his human companionship, his decency. I will miss his ideas, because he always had great insight regarding many, many things," said Naismith.
"I will miss him as a friend and as a person of great imagination and dedication to many things," said George McAnanama, another member of the lunch group.
Not just a dedicated friend, but a fiercely loyal big brother.
"He liked my company, I guess, from the very beginning.
He would push me in the baby carriage," said his younger sister, Linda Antoun Miller.
Miller says she was among his first students. The subject was one of Antoun's favorites: baseball.
"He taught me how to hold a bat, he taught me how to catch a ball with a glove, the proper stance at the plate," she said.
A lifetime of teaching brought to a tragic end...but Antoun's lessons remain.
Lessons on how to reach out to others.
"He was a person that was able to get beyond the mundane things that get in the way of people communicating," said McAnanama.
Lessons on being a role model.
"Dick was such a kind, gentle, loving man. Everybody loved Dick," said Miller.
Lessons on how to be a friend.
"If he hadn't been killed in the way that he was, I would say that he couldn't have an enemy in the world. I mean, everybody liked Dick," said Haeseler.
"I was flattered that he even considered me a friend."