Obituary : Richard Lewartowski

Richard Lewartowski was a stalwart of the original Brussels and Luxembourg Liberal Party. He died from a stroke in August 2018 

We recently heard of the death of Richard Lewartowski. He had been active in the Brussels local party in the 1980s for many years when I first met him. I was living in the Hague at the time and he was working for the European Commission in Brussels. Our common interest in railways lead to several railway journeys investigating the byways of the Benelux railway system. I particularly remember an outing sometime in 1988 or 1989 in which we explored the remains of the railway system in the isolated part of the Netherlands around Terneuzen. Richard was also a great networker. Traveling to the Liberal International Congress in Ottowa in 2000 he struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger in business class (I was on the same plane in economy). The passenger offered him a lift from Montréal to Ottowa and we were a little surprised to be met by a chauffeur-driven car. We only found at the end of the ride that our host was the Governor of the Bank of Canada.

Rob Harrison

Richard's obituary in the Guardian can be found here:

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/20/richard-lewartowski-obituary