In Memory

This morning’s walk was a lot like yesterday’s.  I got up early with Banks, and we started our walk around 5:30.  I was optimistic as soon as I stepped into the cool and breezy air.  But we walked all of one block, and the breeze stopped, and hot and muggy reigned, even at that hour.  We only completed 50 minutes because I needed to get ready for work and get in early.  I had a funeral to attend today at 1:00.

Those of you in Austin have probably read about Mark Gobble, who was struck by a hit-and-run driver Sunday morning while out jogging.  I met Mark and his beautiful, vivacious wife Leslie back in 2006.  What an amazing guy.  Deaf from birth, he had an insatiable desire to achieve.  When I first met him, he was Principal of the deaf school, where Leslie taught.  A couple of years later, he was working on his PhD in Business at UT.  I had lost track of him over the last year or so, and did not know about the successful skateboarding business he had started, or the fact that he and Leslie were about to load up the kids and head off to Boston University, where he’d been hired as an Associate Professor.  I didn’t even know he’d been on an Everest expedition 10 or so years ago!  A documentary was made of him and several others with different handicaps on that journey, but I didn’t learn about that until I read his obituary. Let me say it again….the guy was AMAZING.  If you didn’t gather that from his achievements, all you had to do was converse with him.  His wit was lightning-quick, and what I remember most about our conversations was both of us laughing, a lot.  He was a devoted husband and incredible father to his two children. In every aspect, he was just a cut above the rest of us.

His memorial was a fitting tribute – lots of people with lots of wonderful memories, in a funky little old-fashioned, once-upon-a-time church (Mercury Hall). It was comforting to see Leslie surrounded by so much love and support, and to know that she and the kids will, eventually, be okay.

When I walk my remaining 40 minutes tonight, I’ll do it while remembering Mark, and how much he achieved, and how much he loved life, all the while overcoming a “disability” that he never for one minute considered as such.