Photo by brandonwu.

This editor had been hearing rumblings that Quan Chu, the elderly man who died on Tuesday after he was struck by a bicyclist in an alley near the Convention Center in late November, was a figure many were familiar with. According to some who live in the neighborhood, Chu had been a fixture for years on the streets of Chinatown who — along with his wife — was one of the few remaining fixtures remaining from the era before Chinatown developed into the entertainment district it is today.

Today, Andy Carvin of NPR, whose offices are located in the neighborhood at 635 Massachusetts Avenue NW, went ahead and wrote the eulogy that many of the people who recognized Chu from his daily constitutionals probably wanted to write, if only they could get past the emotion of the situation:

Several times a week, first thing in the morning, I’d see them strolling counterclockwise around the block down 7th Street. No — strolling is too strong a word. They shuffled at a slow, deliberate pace: The elderly gentleman slightly dragging one foot as his wife ambled at the same pace, sometimes supporting his arm.

I probably saw them hundreds of times over the last four years. Apart from colleagues I’d routinely see coming and going from NPR, they were the most recognizable people in our neighborhood. They rarely ever spoke; over those four years, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I heard them talking softly in Chinese. With quiet dignity, they’d stroll down the street, she in a sweater and he in a cap, his hands held behind his back as if deep in contemplation. Sometimes he had a mysterious smirk of authority on his face, almost like a small-town mayor making the rounds in his community.

[…]

I never got to know him. I don’t even know if he even recognized me each day in the same way that I always recognized him. But I feel a profound sense of loss with his passing — not only for his wife and family, but for Chinatown itself.

If you can get through the whole story without at least coming close to breaking down, well, you’re made of stronger fabric than I.