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I wanted to share a story with you that perfectly describes one of the things I loved most about Asher. Two weekends before Asher passed away I had the privilege of hosting him, along with 10 or so other friends at my house in Monsey. Over the weekend we played a game of football in the freezing cold weather. Asher decided due to the weather to play with his hands in his pockets for the whole game. And for those of you who knew Asher, it was a pretty classic move on his part. As you can imagine he didn’t have too many touchdowns with his hands in his pockets. The game was nearing the end and his team had one more play to score a touchdown for the win. My team decide that it was obviously not necessary to defend Asher because he wasn’t really playing... especially not with his hands in his pockets. So, Asher’s team calls hike, everyone is running their routes, and Asher, casually, with his hands in his pockets, strolled into the end zone, turns around, and catches the ball. His team won. This game so beautifully captures one of Asher most admirable traits. Asher was very content with himself, and who he was. He never had to be the loudest, the funniest, the craziest, but he was always the kid everyone called on when they were looking for a great time. He was simply an all around solid kid. Always came through in the clutch and no matter what you did it was a great day with him. It was the same in this football game we had over the weekend. Asher didn’t have an interest in being MVP of the game, or the kid with the most touchdowns, he was content with his hands in his pockets smiling and laughing at all of us tackling each other. But when it came time for the final play, for the clutch moment, there was Asher "AZ" Strobel strolling into the end zone with a big smile on his face. The smile that we always loved and that we'll never forget.
Another story I would like to share with you is one that I experienced with Asher over the summer. One day toward the end of the summer Asher called me asking me if I wanted to join him along with 7-8 other guys on the boat trip in south jersey. I immediately answered yea for sure because if you heard how Asher was describing you would have jumped to say yes as well. Asher kept saying, “ Joe it’s going to be sick a little finishing a lot of chilling and nice boat why not?” So on Sunday morning we hop in the car start driving down obviously we get lost for 45 minutes but finally we get there. We pull into the dock and there was our gorgeous fishing boat from 1960 that has barley moved since then but we got on unsure if the boat would float or sink. As you can imagine the day didn’t start out on the yacht that we were expecting but we were with the boys had a bag of chici’s sandwiches the day was looking promising. So the boats starts it trek out to sea and from the second we leave the bay we immediately learn that we had decided to take a boat out on the windiest day of the summer. Slowly but surely the wavy waters and the shrinking pile of chici’s sandwiches got the better of us, and after some tense negotiations with the captain and a lot of laughing, we turned around and headed back onto dry land. We all got in our cars to head home, but Asher insisted on treating us to some ice cream. As we left the ice cream shop Asher turned to us and said “Great Day”. That was Asher, always having a fun time even when things didn’t go according to plan. He took it all in stride and always managed to provide all of us laughs and smiles and made sure we had an enjoyable day.
I just wanted to leave you with an understanding of what Asher showed me in his short but beautifully sweet life. Be content with yourself be content with life and make sure you are always smiling and striving to enjoy life each and every day.
Love you Asher Thank you for being my friend.
-Joe Cohen
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