Nathaniel (Nat) E. Klein was born Dec. 18, 1995, in Maywood, Ill. He died unexpectedly in his home in Los Angeles, Calif. June 9, 2022. Nat will be terribly missed by all those who had an opportunity to know and love him. A celebration of Nat’s life will be held at Stewart Baxter Funeral & Memorial Services in Mount Vernon, Saturday, July 9, 2022, at 4 p.m., with Visitation beginning at 3 p.m.
Those unable to attend in-person are invited to watch the service via livestream. Please find the livestream link on Nat’s Tribute Wall and share your support, memories, and photos with his family at www.stewartbaxter.com under Obituaries.
Nat was beloved for his self-effacing wit, his dedication to many forms of art and his ability to make friends wherever he went. He was a lover of and an advocate for animals. He found time for the smallest of details.
He was involved in a wide variety of artistic, athletic and academic endeavors. In all of those realms, he sought out extremes of experience and intellectual discovery. He did everything to the best of his ability and did nothing poorly.
From a young age, Nat was musically-inclined. He played violin, piano, French horn and mandolin with an uncanny maturity. He even taught himself to throat sing. He loved all kinds of music from all time periods, from all over the world.
He loved to make visual art, everything from paintings and digital art to tiny sculptures, jewelry, and (somewhat reluctantly) animation. His love of tiny things and large concepts carried over from his miniature art to performing surgery on fruit flies and the eyes of fish.
Nat was an athlete in the classical sense, a cross country runner, an archer and a soccer player. He danced ballet and tap. He continued to participate in many of these activities throughout college and into his adult life. While he lived in Tucson, he was a member of a soccer and archery club. He still enjoyed running any time he could find a trail.
Nat read long books from an early age, loved movies and sketched high fashion design concepts for fun. Friends and family will remember his wickedly funny wordplay, puns, spoonerisms, scathing observations and one-liners, all delivered in a quiet singsong. He spoke English, German and Chinese (and a little French and Spanish). Nat graduated in 2014 from Mount Vernon high school where he participated in the speech club.
Through his varied interests, and in particular his interest in science, Nat had the opportunity to see many beautiful cities and countries. His favorite place of all was Portland, Oregon, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree from Reed College in 2018. In Tucson, he worked at the University of Arizona as a research associate. He later moved to Baltimore, Md, where he studied at Johns Hopkins University for a short period of time before moving to Los Angeles to pursue his career at UCLA. Nat was a published scientist.
Memorial contributions may be directed to the charity of your choice.
Nat is survived by his parents, C. Elise Klein and Gordon Klein; his siblings, Will, Daisy and Poppy; niece Willow and cherished relatives too numerous to list.