Survived by his parents: Anne & Kazuyoshi Murase of Tokyo, Japan
Born and baptized in Tokyo, Richard's early years were spent focused intensely on playing the violin. Educated in one of the finest boarding schools in the world, The Yehudi Menuhin School in London, Richard went on to study and teach at Le Conservatoire de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland receiving a master’s degree. He reached the level of soloist and was living in Monaco playing with some of the finest symphonies in the world.
His love for flying drove him to give up his passion for music and he pursued flight training becoming a flight instructor himself. Immediately prior to working at Hawaiian Airlines, he was a captain at Pinnacle Airlines, a regional carrier in the mainland. Not only was he part of the pilot group, but also was directly involved in their pilot union and, more specifically, he was directly involved in the merger with Colgan Air and successfully negotiated an advancing contract for their group in 2011. He was extremely proud of his union work while there.
Separate from his professional achievements, he was an extremely skilled SCUBA diver, achieving the level of SCUBA instructor, Dive Master and Technical Diver. He has some incredible pictures of himself diving in Antarctica!
He was also an incredible chef...I can speak to his skill personally having dined at his home enjoying an exquisite Thai meal, only later to be topped by a meal he made for me and my wife with venison steaks cooked to perfection (venison he had personally hunted on a trip to Minnesota).
Richard was fluent in three languages, English, Japanese and French.
In short, he was a perfectionist in everything he did. He touched many lives in his short 39 years on this earth, loved by many, missed by even more.
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