Awful news has arrived: The remarkable originator of Through the Eyes of Children: The Rwanda Project, someone whose good works are beyond admiration, is dead.

His close friend, Jenifer Howard, writes, "It is with the heaviest heart that I let you know that a terrible accident claimed the life of our friend, David Jiranek, on Saturday night. While on the last night of his vacation in Canada, he went for a swim with friends and did not surface.

"We, his friends and family, are all reeling from this shocking news and trying to cope with the loss of an amazing person. David touched so many lives during his brief time in this world and truly made a difference."

I knew David Jiranek too briefly and met him only once. But that once, a month ago, was enough to confirm the deep generosity, personal warmth and rare humanity I sensed from our e-mail exchanges. Given what I knew of the Rwanda Project, which enabled young orphans to express themselves through photography, I had expected to meet an elderly gentleman-philanthropist perhaps, possibly a Czech emigre who was a professional photographer.

Instead, David turned out to be a ruggedly handsome young American (he was 45), an actor-turned-writer with an amateur's interest in photography. He told me he had traveled to Africa and come upon the Imbabazi Orphanage only by chance. But he was so taken by the spirit of the place, the kindness of its founder, Rosamond Halsey Carr, and the openness of the children, that he never really left.

David came back to Connecticut, where he lived, and returned to the orphanage with a batch of disposable cameras. He set up a photography workshop and taught the children how to take pictures, the results of which can be seen here.

Then he started raising money for the orphanage. So little was needed to keep it going, he said — perhaps $40,000 a year to finance salaries for the staff and food and clothing for the children — that it would have been unthinkable not to devote himself to that task.

We exchanged gifts. He gave me a print of "Gadi" by Jacqueline. I gave him a book of photographs by my old friend Steve Deutch. Neither David nor I knew the other would be bringing a gift. He invited me to the opening of "Lysistrata" in September, which he was producing Off Broadway, and told me he would be going back to Rwanda in November. We parted with the idea of getting to know each other better.

His loss makes me feel so much sadder than our brief acquaintance would seem to warrant that I can't explain it. David's untimely death is a devastating loss for the children of the Imbabazi Orphanage and a tragedy for his family and friends.