Robert Button, journalism mentor and teacher:

“Perhaps the greatest reward a teacher can have is watching students grow into themselves and their potential. Their successes are our successes. And the memories of the time they spent together ensures they live on for a lifetime.

“Kevin Roberts was one of those students; he brought fun and joy – and an enviable talent and commitment – to the classroom and to long hours after school producing a weekly student newspaper. Even though it has been more than 20 years since I have seen or talked to him, he has lived with me every day. And in spite of the fact that an aggressive cancer took his life this morning, he will live in me forever. My heart and sympathy to his father Art, his brother Jon and to his wide circle of caring friends.”

When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

— Maya Angelou

 

Safest passage, northern Traveler. Today all Towers face South.