My father died last week after a battle with a highly aggressive form of kidney cancer, thankfully he passed peacefully. The Memorial Service will be on Saturday April 17th at 11 am at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Silver Spring. Prior to that, his friends, allies, and fellow advocates will include a tribute to him at the Purple Line Now fundraiser at Montgomery College Performing Arts Center on Monday March 22 at 6 to 8 pm. For those of you that don’t know, the Purple Line is Maryland’s proposal to join the upper spokes of the D.C. Metro system and connect the inner suburbs via light rail.
Katherine Shaver did a lovely obituary in the Washington Post. Jason Tomassini of the Gazette also did a good job. Reporters sometimes have a bad rap for how they handle grieving families, but both were entirely courteous and a pleasure to work with during a tough time.
The Montgomery County Council, including specifically Council Member George Leventhal and Council President Nancy Floreen was so kind as to release a press release praising his life work the day that he died. The statement does make one mistake, the Silver Spring Trails blog is a creation of Wayne Phyillaier, not my father, but they were friends and Wayne’s work for trails and my father’s work for light rail were quite complementary.
The group he helped found back when it was just the Georgetown Branch, the Action Committee for Transit actually used a picture I took a couple Christmases ago (the ACT news page has done a great job of catching the range of tributes and of course is a good way to follow local mass transit news.)
David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington did an early roundup of tributes which led to a strange but touching feeling as I’ve been a longtime reader of GGW and often shared posts with Dad. Richard Layman of Urban Places And Spaces blog gives some history on Dad’s early Georgetown Branch work. Barnaby Zall of the Friends Of White Flint blog similarly speaks to the work and to my surprise had come to D.C. initially for the same reason my father did (and the reason wasn’t transit advocacy).
I’d like to make special mention of Dan Reed’s post on Just up the Pike in which he mentions a video he came out to take on Council Member Leventhal’s instructions, on a Saturday no less, that was my father’s final call to arms. Dan was quite sensitive in getting it done right without taxing Dad’s limited energy. The video will be shown at the Purple Line Now event.
Adam Pagnucco of the Maryland Politics Watch blog was kind enough to round up statements by a range of elected officials and community leaders including hosting a separate tribute with pictures by Mont. County DCC Vice-Chair Alan Banov. Council Member Valerie Ervin shared her thoughts including a lovely poem that does feel true with the coming together I’ve seen in the wake of my father’s death. However, most of all I want to emphasize the tribute Pagnucco gave himself that took my breath away.
I want to thank everyone listed above, all those that have sent cards and emails, all that I have spoken to in person, and especially everyone that has been supporting Mom. If I’ve missed anyone please let me know and I’ll gladly update this post. I will have a difficult time finding words that could add to all the many gracious and loving things that have already been said about my Dad in this past week. As I have said to many people, I am quite proud of all of my father’s work and also grateful that, while I am his only child, I am far from the only one to find inspiration in him. Similarly, while we must build the Purple Line to finish his life work, there are so many friends and allies that are striving to make their shared dream a reality.
Photograph taken by my mother who is also an inspiration and has pushed hard for the Purple Line as well as a range of causes of her own.
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