Category Archives: Family

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Knowing You Are There

It has been a harrowing start to 2025.

The change in Presidential administrations has further divided the nation. My own sense of the shared values that I presumed were unquestionable leaves me confused. I can’t make sense of the logic patterns laying the foundation for our future. The disorientation of those with opposing views seems to be intentional, and sadly, effective.

Closer to home, the wildfires in Southern California came about as close to our home as one could imagine. My wife and I are safe and without major damage to our home after a period of evacuation. We are among the lucky ones.

Everyone we know in the Los Angeles County area knows several people who have lost their homes. The damage we’ve observed can’t be described adequately in words. Whenever a natural disaster occurs, we see people on television attempting to find words to describe it. There’s a reason they mostly just cry. Experiencing the loss is not something words are meant to convey. Words fail us for a reason. Words are inadequate to express the true pain of total loss.

My point in writing here is different. It is meant as an expression of gratitude to all of you who contacted us during the fires. There were calls, texts, emails, social media posts — the kindness was endless. To say I was surprised at the expanse of outreach from around the globe would be another failure of words. Your concern wasn’t just heartening. It was rejuvenating. It was uplifting. It was empowering. It was an inspiration.

The words each of you shared meant the world to us, but more than that, the collective of those words enriched our lives with a sense of hope too easily lost in a time of crisis. We knew we had friends and people who cared about us. We had no idea how many of you there were.

Knowing you are there has proven a more powerful force than you can imagine. I tell you this because as the lucky ones, we are driven to pay it forward. One way to do that is to thank you for your graciousness of spirit. Another is to let you know your words matter more to all the people you offer them than you might think. Of course, actions of support matter in concert with words, but the words you choose to share hold a power all their own. When people know you are there, it gives them the strength to rise up.

Alone very little is possible. Together resilience is possible.

In this time of recovery, please know you are part of the solution when you choose to express kindness. It’s more than words. It’s the fuel of reenergizing those who need a boost. Where there is support, we can rekindle our dreams and muster the strength to find a direction forward. You make this possible in the very evidence of expressing care. Our humanity cannot be taken from us if we maintain the good sense to express it lavishly and without expectation.

Caring and the willingness to express it isn’t just how we get through the wildfires. It’s how we remain on course in our humanity no matter the obstacles thrown at us. Obstacles however great can be overcome when authentic charity overpowers the spoils of dislocation. This I believe is what is meant by community.

Knowing you are there has been a revelation that perhaps should have been more obvious. We can’t thank you enough, and we can only hope you continue that kindness to those who need it much more than we do.

Community is amazing. You are amazing. Together we rise.

_______________

Image: Los Angeles County Recovers

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Staying Forever Young

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

Those lyrics were written by Bob Dylan around 1973. I was in the sixth grade when it was released, so hey, I fit the bill. If I could quote the entire song here without violating copyright, I wouldn’t have to write the rest of this blog post. There you go, blame the copyright laws for making me try to find the words to reflect on the inspiration of a Nobel laureate.

I’m experiencing a moment of sentimentality, but allow me to position that as a positive. Last weekend my wife and I saw the musical Girl from the North Country, which is a collection of more than twenty Dylan songs wrapped around a rather grim story of a boarding house full of exhausted souls during the Great Depression. It’s a a curious pastiche, but from what I can tell Dylan endorsed it. The penultimate number is Forever Young. You don’t need to know more than that — just that this song landed a powerful blow on me at an opportune moment, which is what an impossibly eternal song never ceases to do.

Dylan wrote the song for his children. It has popped up in every context imaginable over the ensuing decades. Google it, the impact is vast and varied. This month it is speaking to me.

A few weeks ago my niece got married on a beach in the rain. She and her fiance looked every bit the part of a couple starting on the next phase of their journey. You can’t help but see the light in the eyes of young love and remember when you stood where they stood. Your youth is your superpower. It is filled with hope, promise, aspiration, and authenticity. The older generations invited to share in the celebration see themselves in the eyes of the betrothed. We are aware of our age, but that isn’t what runs through our minds when vows are exchanged. We try to connect the now to then. In that moment, we remain forever young.

I happen to be on my way to a college reunion. It is a milestone that can be divided evenly by too many integers. The decades behind can’t help but denote age, it’s the underlying purpose of the occasion, to bring together in the present people who learned from each other in the past. Recently my classmates started posting photos of themselves from that time long ago, before mobile phones, digital cameras, and electronic image archives in the cloud. Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away! That’s borrowed from Paul Simon for anyone not of a certain age. Yep, those photos have been sitting in envelopes from mail-in film processing, pasted up in laminated albums stashed under beds, now succumbing to scanning technology and <gasp> social media. I look into the bright eyes of students I knew when Reagan was president and I am convinced they remain forever young.

I look at the conflict in our nation and as hard as I try I barely recognize the place I thought it would become. I talk to my dad about living through World War II as a child and his dreams as a third-generation American for the broadening perspective he believed was ahead for all of us. I’m not sure he realized how idealistic he was as a young man, not fully comprehending the scope of the Civil Rights movement as it emerged all around him, but certainly not expecting to hear so many of the angry expressions currently creeping back into the vernacular. When we sit together now at baseball games, I remember being a young boy also sitting with him at baseball games wondering if the world could be any more perfect than watching Al Kaline catch a deep fly ball to right field on the warning track to end an inning. Today at the games we share, I wonder if my dad in his mind sees himself the way I see myself, not our current age, but with the idea that the life then ahead of us would always be driven by imagination over conflict. In those shared moments of retained dreams, we remain forever young.

Age is real. None of us escapes it. Some of us navigate its trials better than others. It can be genetics. It can be lifestyle. I’d like to say it can also be attitude but like so many my age I’ve seen too much to crawl under that blanket. What I do know is that inside each of us is that very wish Dylan asked us to preserve. It’s there for as long as we remember it, revitalize it, rekindle it. Our bodies will slow, maybe even our minds will slow, but our vision of what we can be is ours to infuse with resonance, To see ourselves in those earlier years can carry us into a more profound, more hopeful, more caring, and more empathetic present for as long as it lasts.

That is the song I am hearing right now and it’s blasting on all channels in stereo.

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

May you stay forever young.

_______________

Image: Pixabay

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The Miracle of 18 Years

This tribute to the life of David P. Coon was delivered live by the author on February 4, 2024 in St. Alban’s Chapel at ‘Iolani School in Honolulu.

I’m standing in his spot. I remember sitting in any number of locations in those pews starting at about age 12. When he stood here, my eyes were transfixed. This was his spot. The chaplains stood here. Many of our teachers stood here. Years later I even stood here a time or two. We were borrowing the space ever so briefly. He belonged here. This magnificent structure was all our home, but this spot was his.

Much can be said about presence. When that presence transcends the ordinary, everyone knows it. Whether speaking as the Revered David P. Coon, Headmaster Coon, Dr. Coon, Father Coon, even the impossible to say “Dave,” this beloved gentleman embodied presence. That baritone voice, that solid handshake, that unforgettable laugh – presence doesn’t even begin to describe him.

This is where I first learned about original sin. I didn’t even know what it was. He stood here and taught us that we had fallen and didn’t even know it. Redemption would be our lifelong mission. What in the world did he mean by that?

That’s heavy stuff I’m still digesting in my 60s. Imagine being 12 and trying to make sense of the homily. It made sense because he always made sense. It was like listening to an opera star. Could be Italian. Could be French. I just wanted to listen.

I loved coming to chapel. Really. For 5 of the 6 years I was a student here, I was the only Jewish kid on the roster. When we became co-ed my senior year, I was no longer solo in that regard, diversity was blossoming at every level. It had been every year prior. The women who joined this community as students and graduates did so in the culmination of this headmaster’s vision. He saw it as necessary before anyone else and he made equality reality.

This was a place of learning and truth. This was a place of inclusion This was a place of love. I’ve never felt more at home than I did on this campus.

Dave Coon insisted on that. Dave Coon made it so.

I’ve been awarded the honor of speaking today on behalf of the ‘Iolani alumni in tribute to a man we respected, admired, emulated, and loved. It’s an impossible task and I have been asked to keep it brief. If you know me, you know that’s even more of an impossible task.

Brevity is required so I will do my best to honor it. Representing the breadth and depth of alumni that walk up here each Spring and get a diploma? I’m just going to admit failure right now and try instead to tell you what I think Father Coon did better than anyone else in all my years and travels.

Ready?

He planted seeds.

Not ordinary seeds. Seeds of excellence. Seeds of change. Seeds of diversity. Seeds of integrity. Seeds of the impossible. Fragile, vital seeds that sprout in young minds and grow stronger and steadier for a lifetime.

I’m a grandparent now. It’s a bit eerie. It’s caused me to think about the arc of childhood in ways I never imagined. Those baby seeds take shape in enormously deep roots, inescapably revealing insights in the most unpredictable contexts. We all start out in the same place. Completely vulnerable. Non-conversant. Utterly dependent. Absent memory. Even Dave started that way. Hard to imagine.

What happens next, I’ve come to think of as The Miracle of 18 Years. This was a revelation for me, a daunting moment of transformation.

Years ago, I was interviewing an impressive high school senior for college. I do this each year as a volunteer. This particular young adult was blowing me away with knowledge, analysis, ambition, humility, graciousness, kindness – she even made me laugh.

So I’m sitting there marveling at this 18-year-old laying out a portfolio of observations eons beyond her years and a game plan to make the fast track to a Nobel prize, and I’m wondering, how did that happen? How did that barely cognizant infant compound knowledge over a period of just 18 years and come to utilize a vocabulary that sent me paging through the Oxford English Dictionary?

It seems impossible to believe that could happen. I’ve been trying to put that together for the better part of a decade, how that arc works, the impossibility of diapers to Dostoevsky in an 18-year sprint. 18 years, it’s nothing, it flies by, and suddenly you’re an adult human being. Who figured that out?

In that moment of clarity, all I saw was Father Coon. This was his gig. This was his normalcy. He never thought twice about it.

Each year another group of us would arrive, each of us a small lump of pizza dough. We could be 6-year-old pizza dough, 12-year-old pizza dough, it didn’t matter to Dave. This man knew how to turn pizza dough into pizza.

And here was the secret trick. He knew each of us was unique. No two of us would be the same. I think he loved that most of all. It wasn’t his job to mold us into what he wanted us to be. He wanted to mold us into the best version of ourselves that we could be. What mattered to Dave was that we would become what we wanted to be.

Were there a few values we should share? You bet. Did we have to know when a sentence ended where to place the period? Oh, yes. Did 2 + 2 equal five? No, it did not. The rest? Mostly up to us.

That’s where he planted the seeds. In our hearts. In our minds. In our souls. We were not finished goods. Those seeds needed to grow inside us for the rest of our lives. That’s what he understood better than anyone I’ve met. That was what he did better than anyone I’ve met. He helped us become who we needed to become, and he taught us to care for each other more than ourselves.

Parents do it. Of course, they do. Once, twice, in the extreme maybe six or eight times. He might pray for you if that were the case. He did it hundreds of times each year for decades. You want to talk about leverage and scale? You want to talk about consistency? Imagine creating that miracle of human development over and over again – never losing energy, never losing interest, never losing faith. Imagine the odds of that kind of repeat success.

There’s a word that comes to mind: indefatigable.

You know what else? He did it quickly. We didn’t see it coming. We didn’t even know it was happening. He knew The Miracle of 18 Years was a ticking clock. When we came up here in the Spring to shake his hand, that clock had mostly run its course. Another clock was starting. His day job was done, but its impact was only beginning.

Dave Coon led this astonishing institution from its storied past to its celebrated future. On this campus where we gather today, he made that miracle purely routine.

I had the good fortune at one point in my career to work at Disney where we talked a lot about magic. That dialogue dates back to Walt.

If you’re into science fiction, you know that Arthur C. Clarke wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Neither Walt Disney nor Arthur C. Clarke had anything on Dave Coon. Dave Coon worked his magic perfecting and normalizing The Miracle of 18 Years. They might have failed his class. He probably would have asked for more specificity.

Okay, we’re in the home stretch, I promised brevity, and this is not the kind of place to tell lies. Here is the most important part.

It didn’t stop when he left. The seeds were planted all around this place. There were teacher seeds who shared the magic with other teacher seeds. There were leadership seeds that in this room right now are evangelizing inspired leadership. There were math seeds and sports seeds and music seeds and poetry seeds. They all just keep growing.

Father Coon stepped off this lectern when he thought it was time to do other things, to nurture a church on the Big Island, to spend time with his family, to counsel another generation of educators. The seeds were deeply embedded. Their magic kept blossoming.

The Miracle of 18 Years continued. It continues to this day, while he watches and listens to us from a different place of presence.

We embark as youngsters naively on The Miracle of 18 Years with hopes of accomplishment, hungry to achieve goals, eager to find fulfillment in the relationships we traverse. When there are more years behind us than there are ahead of us, we may start to think instead about legacy.

Legacy is not something we can direct; it is left for others to decide. The legacy of Dave Coon is the perpetuation of his presence in this beautiful place where he lived and worked and touched each of our lives.

It is a legacy of love, which is the one lesson he taught repeatedly, sometimes in the classroom, sometimes on the lawn, sometimes standing in this place. He is still here and will be forever. This is still his place. I am a seed of his legacy as are we all. The love of this alumni for Father Coon is boundless. He taught us to love each other, to welcome the stranger, to honor every life we would be privileged to encounter.

How can any presence be more profound than that?

_______________

Photo: ‘Iolani School

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David Coon: An Appreciation

The end of each year is a time for reflection. We often look back on the past year and try to summarize our milestones. Sometimes we set New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions. At the moment I’m thinking about someone who won’t be part of the new year.

That is the way of things, perhaps the hardest part of being human, knowing almost as soon as cognition forms that there are bookends on all of us. That inescapable awareness is in many ways the essence of our humanity. We have no choice but to internalize it with relative calm. It doesn’t make it easier when we say goodbye, but it does give us a chance to express thanks for the lives around us who change the course of our own.

The Reverend David P. Coon was the head of the school I attended through middle and high school. He officiated at my wedding. I dedicated my second book to him. It is difficult to record in words what he meant to me because I would be looking for the kind of words it takes to summarize five decades of character-building.

Certainly the earliest of those years were more concentrated, but those took place at a time when I was least likely to understand the transformation he was causing to occur in my mindset. In those days he was Father Coon and I would literally tilt my head up to be able to look into his eyes. He walked the halls of our campus with a magnificent physical presence, a baritone voice that reverberated in the corridors, an embodiment of pure confidence, and a sense of authority that never needed to be asserted. He could be questioned on matters of intellectual curiosity, but not on matters of expectation. He expected we would take our education seriously, our shared community seriously, the mandate of maintaining humility seriously, and the place we would come to take in the world seriously.

He was a serious man and he endeavored to help us see the seriousness in the paths before us. He also laughed as loudly as anyone I’ve met and made us laugh, mostly at ourselves at the times our seriousness crossed into counterproductive meandering. We could ponder the world, obsess on this philosopher or that scientist, but we always needed to be moving forward. Laughing at ourselves moved us forward. It helped us frame ambition appropriately in service to others. It was okay to be on a reward path, but it was not okay to think that material rewards meant a hill of beans compared to healing our world. To gain his respect, we would be required to commit our gifts to the continuum of that healing.

I would not be exaggerating to share that without Father Coon’s influence, it is unlikely I would be typing these words. Our teenage years are a crapshoot at best; mine were a casino where the odds were daunting. Somehow this stranger, this teacher of the impossible, got me to stop betting against myself. He mopped up a mess and caused me to believe everything ahead of me was more important than everything behind me. How much of that did I understand? Come on, I was a teenager, none of it. Yet I remember it now, and it works even better with fewer years left ahead of me than there are behind me.

Was he a visionary? He would just say he was a teacher. I’m going to stick with visionary.

His career was remarkable, but I am going to let others write about the expanse of that. He took an all-boys school built on the ancient tradition of recital and transformed it into a modern coeducational place of learning. He initiated change that broadened the paradigm of “sage on the stage” to embrace peer cooperation that put the whole of the student body above the celebration of any single student. One Team, we called it. He elevated ‘Iolani School to global recognition as a laboratory of exemplary process and a trusted model for lasting outcomes.

He took the tragic lessons of the Vietnam War and opened the minds of a diverse audience to the possibility of peace. His sermons beckoned the beauty and unlimited empowerment of embracing one’s opposite. He was a theologian who could preach with the best of them, but he was a pragmatist who knew declarations without substantive action were the fast track to cynicism. He was not a cynic. His faith was unwavering, a boundless reservoir of resilience and optimism, ardently tested, joyously unshakeable.

If you needed food, water, a quiet moment of prayer, or a reinforcing nod of encouragement, you didn’t have to ask. He was always showing us how kindness and strength were compatible. He was an inspirer of unusual aspiration. The highest order of ourselves is of course never achievable, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to make it our life’s work to try.

Later in life, when he presumed I had reached adulthood, he insisted I call him Dave. That in his mind was one of the least difficult challenges he presented to me. If only he knew.

My wife, Shelley, there with Dave and a few family attendees at our wedding with a little New Testament and a little Old Testament, likes to talk about planting seeds. This is her spirituality, and she immerses herself in it as a matter of routine. When I mention the five decades of Dave, it is just these seeds that he planted that have blossomed in different expressions over the years. At our wedding, as I broke the glass, this Episcopal priest belted out the words “Mazel Tov” with such resonance they probably echoed in Jerusalem.

Those echoes live in me today. I’ll carry the octaves of his voice with me until my inescapable fate is the same as his, the same as us all. The learning inside me is without end because he made that important to me. The questions in me are more important than the answers because he showed me why the questions are eternal but the answers get rewritten by the centuries. Judgment is for the certain, and how many of us can be that certain with so little knowledge? Reflection takes us forward, always forward, because it requires systemically removing our ignorance. Forward is a path to wisdom, where humility is not a choice, but a necessity.

Demonstration of awe and honor is common among theologians. Dave knew that, likely early in his life, no problem. Would you expect less of a kid who grew up boxing in Flint, Michigan only to become a man of the cloth in Hawaii? The trick wasn’t that he knew it. The trick was he got me to know it, a highly unlikely candidate for that sort of unnerving alchemy.

And the next kid. And the next kid. And the next kid.

Those were the seeds he never stopped planting. They flourish now in every part of our world, across languages and borders, wherever there is a need for healing. The lives he inspired carry forward hope, breathe aspiration, and most of us try to remember on occasion to laugh.

Earlier this month I received our usual Christmas card from Dave and his wife, Joanne. In it was a printed note that said it would be their last, that they were going to spend their remaining time focused on each other and their family. I immediately put our card in the mail to them, telling them I would frame their photo and keep it on my desk forever. That card came back undeliverable. Of course, I didn’t know he was in hospice. That makes this almost our last Christmas together.

I end the year incomplete. Timing is everything and we seldom get to say goodbye to everyone we lose. I enter the new year a little more alone, a little less formed, but in knowledge that those seeds were well-planted if not fully seen and understood a half-century ago. Our character is tested daily, our mistakes are endless, and our learning is forever incomplete. Each of us should be so lucky as to have a few people who guided us forward and never let go. If you enjoy the good fortune to have been so inspired by a person of such wisdom, there aren’t enough ways or words to say thank you. We can only offer a humble appreciation.

Dave, this appreciation is eternal, as are your teachings, as is your incomparable love.

_______________

Image: Dave & Joanne Coon, Christmas Card 2023