Tragedy Strikes LA Squash Community
by Bob Hanscom
Alan Young-Bryant and girl friend Alexis Briley at a recent
team-league playoff match at The Los Angeles Athletic Club.
Photo: JP Rothie
December 8, 2012 - Squash player Alan Young-Bryant, 32, of Los Angeles, was found dead at a creek-side path Wednesday morning in Cascadilla Gorge on the campus of Cornell University. Police think his death was caused by an accidental fall into a gorge. Doctors examined the body in an autopsy Thursday at Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton.
Living in Los Angeles, Alan was working for Oaktree Capital Management, being responsible for, among other things, devising ways to improve the firm’s writing. He had been back in Ithaca to visit his long-time girlfriend Alexis Briley to celebrate the completion of her exams and the successful defense of her Ph.D. thesis.
Alan attended Northfield Mount Hermon private school in western Massachusetts and Tufts University. He arrived at Cornell in 2003, earning his master’s degree and Ph.D. in English language and literature, studying the works of poets Algernon Charles Swinburne, D.G. Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins for his dissertation.While at Cornell, he taught at the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, where English graduate students typically teach and coach undergraduates in writing.
Alan Young-Bryant
Some of Alan's squash friends at The Los Angeles Athletic Club had this to say about him and the tragic accident:
David Kaye, voice actor: "We lost a great guy and a great player. Alan, I'll miss the games man. Rest in piece my friend."
Ivy Pochoda, author and former Harvard varsity squash great: "Unspeakably sad!"
Dr. Basil Amer: "Very sad to learn about Alan's passing. One never knows what will happen tomorrow. So sad indeed!"
A memorial service for Alan was held Saturday in the Cornell A.D. White House.
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