Now the community the Nashes called home will pay tribute in a highly personalized way, one we'd like to think would touch the couples' hearts.
When John Nash died with his wife Alicia in a car crash earlier this year, accolades poured in from sources far and wide.
He was eulogized by Al Jazeera and The Guardian. The New York Times wrote that Nash was "widely regarded as one of the great mathematicians of the 20th Century," and the Wall Street Journal lauded his work on "the nature of strategy and negotiations [which] changed modern economics."
Even the U.S. National Security Agency tweeted that it was saddened by the loss.
Now the community the Nashes called home will pay tribute in a highly personalized way, one we'd like to think would touch the couples' hearts.
On Oct. 23, West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh will officiate at a ceremony dedicating Nash Park, a patch of land at the corner of Alexander and Princeton Hightstown Roads. Still in its planning stages, the park is likely to have an Asian theme, with components such as a Japanese water bridge and a gazebo.
Nash, a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, inspired the 2001 Ron Howard film, "A Beautiful Mind."
The movie, which portrays Nash's struggles with paranoid schizophrenia, won the Academy Award for best picture; John and Alicia later became fierce advocates for mental-health care in the Garden State.
MORE: Why John Nash was important to the world beyond mathematics
The two were returning home to West Windsor from an awards ceremony when their taxi crashed against a guardrail. They were thrown from the car, and pronounced dead at the scene.
The park was in the works even before that day in May.
Hsueh, something of a kindred spirit with a doctorate in engineering, fully understands Nash's outsize role in the scientific world. Months before the accident he shared with Nash plans for the park, which will stand on ground just minutes from the 1994 Nobelist's home.
We love the idea that West Windsor has chosen a piece of nature to memorialize a world-class academician who so keenly understood humankind's place in the world.
And how fitting that the dedication ceremony will take place just one day before Princeton University also honors one of its favorite sons.
Nash received his doctorate in mathematics from the university in 1950, returning to the school 45 years later. He worked as a senior research mathematician until he died.
A full day of academic panels on Oct. 24 will include a public lecture by Sylvia Nasar, who wrote the book on which "A Beautiful Mind" was based, and an evening service at which Nash's family members and former colleagues will gather.
The Nashes were familiar figures on campus, and on the streets of West Windsor. How appropriate these latest tributes are.