Remembering Stu

Our wise, kind, highly-skilled friend Stu, deeply committed to justice, is gone. Here his father, Roger, and stepmother, Mardel, address the gathered mourners on a freezing cold, rainy day in a covered basketball court in a Portland park. Sue and I had dinner with Roger and Mardel the night before the memorial, and Sue read statements from Stu's daughter Rachel, his ex-sister-in-law (married to Stu's brother Bruce before Bruce came out as gay), and Bruce's two sons. Stu was his father's first-born child. There were a few very tender songs written by people who were jailed with Stu during Occupy ICE; there were Aztec dancers paying tribute to a man who devoted years of his life to protecting immigrants (see another extra), there were memories and gratitudes from those who loved him, and there were about sixty people gathered, trembling with cold, to say farewell. 

Stu was a rational, thoughtful, deeply centered and very sane man. He had left a successful career as a writer and IT specialist and had been living, by choice, among unhoused people for four years, advocating for them, building community with them. He was 58. He was kind to everyone, accepting of everyone, and his legacy of kindness lives in his comrades who are still here, still working, against all odds, to build a more just world. His 22-year-old nephew began his remarks with "Death to capitalism!" eleven times before his remembrance of the playfulness and laughter his uncle was known for. We loved Stu, we learned more about him from his father than we had ever known, and we are broken-hearted.