[Oe List ...] Celebrating a Completed Life

[Gordon Harper]

Well, damn! --

Let's celebrate this completed life of one of our remarkable colleagues 
as he would have wished--with joy and laughter, wild stories and deep 
appreciation for a life lived on behalf of.

Martin Howell died suddenly on July 22nd in Yakima, WA from an aneurism 
or blood clot.  He was 64 years old.  I recently heard about it through 
the grapevine and have only now been able to confirm it and get news 
about how Yakima celebrated the event.

Talked today with one of his close colleagues, Mary, at the Yakima 
consulting firm in which Martin was a key player for many years, having 
retired just a couple years ago.  From her I learned --

  * that 300 people came to the funeral, which was held in the local
    museum auditorium;
  * that there were strict orders that no one was to wear black--so it
    looked, according to Mary, like a beach party in Hawaii;
  * that a huge screen in the front featured a shot of Martin in the
    swimming pool with a goofy expression;
  * that stories poured in from all over the world;
  * and that the only time there were tears was when his brother from
    New York, who had been estranged from Martin for many years, took
    the stage to share how blown away he was to learn about his
    brother's life and to wish that he had known him better.

Martin was for many years an ICA ToP trainer (in his own inimitable way, 
as you might guess), and I invited him to join me on half a dozen 
occasions to do courses in Seattle during the '90s.  Had we asked 
participants to rate our trainings on a scale of sheer fun, these would 
have won hands down.  Yakima is pretty solid Republican small town rural 
eastern Washington, and the fact that Martin as an openly gay man could 
be so highly respected and even adored there always seemed a marvel to 
many of us.  Couple that with the fact that his partner (another ToP 
trainer in Yakima) in much of the training and facilitation he did was a 
devout Mormon, and you have some picture, if you didn't know him well, 
of how wonderfully human and engaging Martin was.

Martin may not have kept up with many of his Order colleagues, and the 
obit from the local paper doesn't even mention this part of his life.  
For those of us who knew him, however, we celebrate the completed life 
of a dear colleague and friend --

Gordon

Obit and picture from the /Yakima Herald-Republic/
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