The story sounds like it was written in a fevered fantasy and then whipped into shape on a Hollywood sound stage: a baby is born and then adopted, drops out of college and makes it big, gets dramatically pushed from his company and then comes back once again. It is not Hollywood magic this time, but real life, and instead of having a surprise ending, full of schmaltz and ersatz sentiment, it is true and tragic at the same time. The spiritual genius, the passionate marketer, the barefoot visionary, Steve Jobs has died.

Born in 1955, Jobs was still in high school when his interest in electronics and technology was sparked. Needing parts for a school project, young Steve approached William Hewlitt, the president of Hewlitt-Packard. He got the parts, of course, but he also got a summer job out of the request and a legend was in the making.  He faithfully started college but quit after a single semester. In the world that sometimes forgets that not all knowledge comes from education, that was a scary, gutsy move, but fate had something far bigger in mind for Jobs.

The man who would create legend in a garage was an ever changing chameleon, adapting to changes in his life as well as in his creative processes as he grew and expanded. He was working as a video game designer but quit that job to wander through India, reportedly taking psychedelic drugs in the process. With Steve Wozniak, he built Apple Computers, Inc and then was ousted from the company. He couldn’t find the same magic with a new computer company, it just was not there as far as the public was concerned. But, he smelled potential in Pixar Studios, buying it from George Lucas in its earliest days, way before the animated success came pouring in. Cue the heart strings, it was Jobs who made the plea for one of Pixar’s most beloved movies, Finding Nemo.

It was 2004 when Steve Jobs faced the board of directors at Apple, back in the fold after years of absence. He was thinner and a little paler than usual and told the group that he had pancreatic cancer. He came back, only to take a medical leave again five years later, this time for a secret liver transplant. Despite being urged to slow down, to take it easy, to care for himself, he kept coming back, saying he would stop when he could not handle his duties to his own capacities. He finally stepped down in January, saying in part that he could not continue to fulfill his duties and meet expectations as he would like to.

In addition to the void he is leaving in the business world, having taught some of the world’s most powerful executives how to expand their minds beyond what they are being taught in business school, Steve Jobs is leaving behind dreamers who will continue to reach for their own vision of stars as well as his wife of twenty years, Laurene. Jobs also had four children.