Ellen
Welcome, everyone. It's so wonderful to see all of your faces here today. And to also be joined by over 70 people with us online from every part of the world. And we're hear today to remember and celebrate Nell Whitman.

While today is unavoidably connected to feelings of sadness, and we mourn the loss of someone so loved, her family asks us to join together today to remember and reflect not with a serious and somber tone, but in lightness and to share happiness for a life well-lived. And what a group of people to do that with. So, thank you all for coming.

Cris
Hi, I'm Cristina Crocker, and this is my sister, Ellen. Nell and my sister met when Ellen was renting an apartment at Nell and Bob's house. And Ellen introduced me to Nell. Nell and I are both writers. We were working on a project, and we thought: "Oh, this is wonderful. We'll be writing accountability buddies." And so we started writing together, and we found that more than writing we would talk about writing. And the wonderful thing about having a writing accountability buddy is that both of us really struggled with finding the right words to express the ideas that we wanted to express. And we found that in our conversations that we could have this sacred connection, right. And so here I am again trying to find the right words to sum up something that I can't do. And uhm I'm so honored to be here with my sister, and all of you, so that we can all try to find the right words to honor a person who we loved so much.

Ellen
We were asked to join today by Nell's family in the role of introducing each of our speakers today and in helping the transitions between a mix of online and in-person presentations. As all things go with video streaming, and over the past few years we have certainly gotten familiar with that, if there are technical difficulties we will roll with those. And many thanks to the team that is in charge of making that happen. Reminder for everyone to silence your phones or other devices that you might have. And wherever you are, whatever you are feeling today, Nell's family thanks you for your presence here.

So our first speaker today will be Nell's sister, Penelope Whitman, joining us online from D.C. She's joined there by Nell's mother, Eleanor, and a huge group of people who love Nell and are remembering her together, surrounded by love today.

Remembering Nell

December 18, 2021

My name is Penelope Whitman. I'm Nell's sister. On behalf of our family, I want to thank you all for being here, the wonderful group of you at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, those of you gathered here at Collington in Maryland with me, my mother Eleanor Whitman, my son Frank, and many friends, and those of you joining us from your homes. Thank you all.

Many of you have traveled to be where you are today, whether that was negotiating the beltway in Maryland, air travel or long drives to get to Lexington or simply the holiday madness where you live. We have all been so busy. I'd like to ask if we could take just a minute to settle into this space, this collective space to which we have come to celebrate the life and legacy of Nell, to reach into our memories of her, and to reach out with our hearts toward her–and toward each other.

When I think about Nell, I think about the way she comes into a room. Often she is coming a little bit late, and apologetically so, and, as Kitty so beautifully described in the bio that she wrote for the program you have, often she is carrying multiple things as she comes in, maybe groceries, maybe books, and usually a frayed pile of papers. You can see her, right? You can see her big smile as she comes in towards us. "Hello, my Delights!" She exclaims.

Hello my delights! Hello my delights.

I've been thinking since she died about this greeting of Nell's, about what it has been like to be one of Nell's delights. We are all one of Nell's delights.

One quality of being held in Nell's embrace is the absolute minutiae of our lives that she was willing to get into with us. The trenches.

I have a clear memory of her visiting me when I was an undergraduate student at the University of New Hampshire. This was around 1982. I was living in an apartment with roommates, off campus, and the shower in the apartment was one of those horrible acrylic, molded inserts that are impossible to get clean–to get, you know, the soap scum off.

Nell and I both had cleaned houses as a part-time job, she in high school, me during college, but she was more comprehensive and rigorous than I. She insisted on spending half a day of her visit in my bathtub with a kitchen spatula until all the accumulated yuck was scraped away. Oh my god. I've never forgotten that. Would you do that for somebody? I'm not sure I would. That is truly embracing the minutiae, the funk, of someone else's life. She brought that willingness to get into people's lives and try to make things better for them to other family members, to her students, and to her friends.

Another quality of being one of her delights was the experience of how immensely companionable Nell was. Nell was THE person you wanted sitting at your kitchen table all the time. When I was living in Lexington, and we both had young children, she'd often come over early on Saturday mornings with a big stack of grading and a pile of cookbooks. The idea was that we'd menu plan for the week, and go to the farmer's market or the coop afterward. I never wanted her to leave. But she had to and did, because there were so many things on her list for that day. Often wayyy too many things on her lists.

Indeed the nature of being one of her delights was that there were so many other commitments, so many other delights that contended for her time! Nell was so energized and inspired by people that she was continually drawing new friends into her embrace. I remember Kitty telling me about a time Nell was visiting her and Louis in Virginia Beach. Nell had gone off either to run errands or take a walk (we can't precisely remember). If you read the bio that Kitty wrote of Nell, you were reminded that Nell spent a meaningful gap year in the Dominican Republic. Somewhere out on this errand run, Nell encountered a family of Dominicans, and without further ado, invited the entire extended family over to Kitty's for a porch party. I'm not sure if Kitty or Louis were consulted about this, but before they knew what was happening, their porch had been converted to a Dominican dance party and beauty salon, as the Dominican grandma, who was visiting her kids in VB, and had been missing her work as a stylist–saw an opportunity to tame Nell's wild curls.

This open embrace of others, this joyful celebration of their gifts and achievements, this steadfast solidarity with their challenges and sorrows, this is what I carry with me from my sister. This is indeed a gift that we, all of us, can carry forward, with each other, as this newly cemented community of those who love and have lost Nell

"I will not doom-scroll. I will not doom-scroll," I write across the chalkboard of my mind, as I read the "paper" before bed. I know, I know. The self-care gurus would not sanction this choice, but I assure you that I'm making every effort to curate the experience. As it turns out, however, after indulging in a hopeful article about the scientific wonders of the new COVID vaccines, I am hard-pressed to find an acceptable headline to select. Until: "Scientists Discover Outer Space Isn't Pitch Black After All." Ah ha! Sounds like light fare–thanks NPR. What could be better than discovering that we don't really know if outer space is black? "For 400 years," the article reads wryly, "astronomers have been studying visible light and the sky in a serious way and yet somehow apparently 'missed half the light in the universe.'"

This, readers, is the stuff of poetry.

Astronomy is one area of study that leaves me bemused. My companionship with Orion is the closest I come to being attached to the celestial plane. Orion is solid. Every winter morning before dawn, my cat leads me fruitlessly to the back door. Stumbling from sleep, freezing and half-clad as I wait for my feline epicure of backyard conditions to reject a foray into the darkness, I glance up through the long bony fingers of the maple. On clear mornings, Orion's belt of bling never fails to catch my eye. "There you are!" I think, cheered by his reliable presence. Nevermind that he's a hunter and I'm a pacifist. He'll be my only human company for hours.

On second thought, it's not that I don't gaze at the night sky in awe on the regular. The Moon and I are tight. In fact, I'm something of a lunaphile. I watch her every move, feel her every tug and pull. When I was a kid, the patriarchy taught me to see her as a man looking down over us. Fortunately, I know better now. Like Keats, I admire the steadfastness of our Bright Star. But I don't see her as this priest-like purifier as Keats did. He, too, was a victim of the patriarchy, falling prey to the classic Madonna-whore dichotomy. It seems that he saw women as either the warm lap to indulge in under the "fall and swell" of her breast or the sanctified nun on high. In my eyes, our Moon, like all women, is complex–a force. My heart lurches when I catch glimpses of her, especially when she appears in my favorite forms. At times, sly thing, she shows just a sliver of herself. When that other star (or is it Venus?) sidles up beside her, she sports the exotic look of the Turkish flag, bringing me back to that sensuous float I had in the hot springs of Pamukkale as she shone over the luminous travertines flooded with waters like warm Perrier. And then there are nights in late August when she reveals her whole voluptuous self, rising cantaloupe-orange over the Atlantic, in defiance of all the color-blind almanakers who claim she will appear blue. But don't let me objectify our Moon. She's powerful. Few teachers are foolish enough to overlook her ability to create unrest in their unsuspecting charges. I myself felt her powers personally one evening in early summer, when my daughter, Sophia, drawn to her light, arrived to our world early. I could not, would not, live without the radiant glory that is the Moon.

It's just that, when it comes to astronomy, I side with Walt Whitman. Famously, when he "heard the learn'd astronomer" professing his knowledge of the distant realms, he snuck out of the lecture hall and into the night, glancing up here and there "in perfect silence at the stars." When scientists start wanking about their knowledge of the cosmos, my mind goes numb. The minute "Star Talk" comes on the air, my mind drifts willfully into my own version of outer space. I acknowledge that this aversion to astronomy
has long been a shortcoming of mine. In college, in an ill-conceived act that defied self-knowledge, I took my boyfriend's advice and took astronomy. Bob had been so enthusiastic about the class that the professor had granted him "supernova" status. Though I had sailed through biology, enamoured of the constellation of cells beneath every microscope, I dragged myself groaning to those astronomy lectures. Despite my prof's best efforts, I can hardly explain the planetary orbits or the true nature of a black hole. Don't get me wrong–I am in no way proud to be grouped with so many Americans who turn away from science. I'm pretty sure my determination to remain astronomically ignorant stems from my desire to preserve the mystery, the sheer beauty of the Unknown. Astronomy feels like a spoiler.

Which brings me to my smug glee when I read last night that astronomers missed "half the light in the universe." There's something about the hubris of man trying to understand and harness these natural forces that gets my goat. I concede that the loftier minds among us, in studying the intricacies of the universe, have amassed astounding knowledge. I must admit, the discovery that astronomers have sent a spacecraft of some sort careening past Pluto, allowing us to examine whether the night stars are really knit together by darkness, is kind of fabulous. But I'm determined not to make the same mistake they have in getting all caught up in the knowledge realm. I am reminded not to miss half the light in the universe–the light that seeps in when we put the phone down and step out to listen to the silence of the stars.

Good afternoon everyone

My siblings and I are honored to be here. I'm happy to see everyone since I get the opportunity to put the faces to the stories I've been told. Miss Whitman wrote all of our recommendation letters so we decided to write her a recommendation letter to God for her admission to the VIP unbelievers section in heaven. I know miss Whitman was not a religious person but she deserves the best. We met because my brother wanted her to review his college essay. He was not even one of her students so I believe that it was destined for us to be in each other's lives. I still remember the first time we met, we had an immediate connection as we bonded over a book named "outsiders" - not knowing that she will play such an important role in my life. In a span of 4 years she would become my best friend, mentor, and my second mom. She the definition
of a role model.

We had plans to go try out the pretzel with the fancy dripping, I was going to get my driver's license so I could finally give her a ride for a change. I believe she introduced me to a new lifestyle of being a Kentuckian.

Through her, we have been blessed with a community of loving people such as Bob, Kitty, Sophia and Lucy which they have now become our part of our family. I didn't forget Percy and Liza.

We did not lose Miss Whitman because we learned and shared so many moments with her. My memories ranged from being treated for ice-cream after not making it into the school soccer team to celebrating Zawadi's graduating in our back yard while we introduce her to some African dishes. We shared emotional intimate moments. Laughed and celebrated every achievement.

She will always be with us and her legacy will live and grow with us. God I know I can be biased but I'm not a friendly person and I don't like a lot of people on earth. She is the best person for the job, she is a saint except when it comes to YMCA membership where she lied that I was her daughter to sneak me in, well I wouldn't count that against her it was for the greater good

Please tell my best friend, my mentor, my second mom that I would like to thank her for everything she did for me and my family, it may be small to her but it always means the world to us; especially when she supported us through our hardships. Thank you so much for being in our lives and we love her so much

Eleanor McCormick Whitman III, that was her answer when I asked her, in the rundown Capitol Hill house Bob, Nadia and I rented in 1986, what does "Nell" stand for?

When I heard her say her full name – Eleanor McCormick Whitman III, with the big rosy cheeks, the milky beautiful skin, the beaming, radiant, toothy, full faced smile and the hair – that hair – me, a Jewish kid from shtetel northeast Philadelphia – I thought to myself – are you kidding? I'm looking at a character from a novel I read in 9th grade. So, I said to Nell, sounding embarrassingly like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, "what, so you're an ethnic WASP?"

Before I had a chance to re-evaluate what I had said to Bob's budding new love interest, the product of an authentic new age Georgetown, book-store meet-up secretly choreographed by book store sister-boss Penny – Nell laughed, her effervescent infectious laugh, and then she laughed some more and then responded by doubling down, "yep, and my twin sister's name is Kitty for Katherine and my older sister is Penny for Penelope." Nell, Kitty and Penny.

Now it was my turn to belly laugh and we laughed together and for the next 35 years, we have been laughing, crying, exploring, talking, listening, cooking, raising kids together, and purposefully investing in our seemingly forever and timeless connection.

Nell, who quickly became known to me as Nellie, just like Bob, who I had met traveling to Israel a few years earlier, became "my Bobbie" – me, Nellie and Bobbie, adventured in wilderness including a memorable bushwhack through Yosemite's back country, in our cherished coastal Maine with my wife Heidi, the hills of West Virginia, Colorado, California, yearly family beach vacations, on a fishing boat, while food shopping, cooking and long languorous dinners. During all those years, Nellie repeated that ethnic WASP joke back to me over and over again citing it as the moment she knew we would be connected to each other.

The second earliest memory I have of Nellie was about her first year of college at Middlebury, more precisely the end of her first year. Nellie landed at Middlebury after spending a year in the DR as a one-year exchange student living with a family she remained committed to throughout her life. The transition from then third world DR directly to the privilege of Middlebury College – a storied, resourced Vermont liberal, liberal arts college famous for its academic rigor and bucolic only in Vermont setting – and green, peaceful, tree-lined, commons – left Nellie feeling like an outsider – uncomfortable. So much so that she decided to leave after her first year and return to DC which led her to Bob and then me.

The story, as I remember it, and forgive my small embellishments here, was her dead pan description of the "statement" she made when leaving Middlebury for good – which as I remember, was the story of Nellie, an outsider, striking against Middlebury's unfair privilege.

It was a beautiful if rare warm early, sparkly skied spring day, the end of her freshman year, when Nellie, packed up her VW rabbit which was parked at the top of a hill overlooking one of those historic Middlebury commons with an impossibly – only-in-Vermont lush green lawn, the ground softened by spring rains. And, as it turned out, a random smattering of unsuspecting, relaxed, reeking with not-a-care-in-the-world privilege, far from innocent, sunbathing students – no doubt a symbol of the kind of privilege Nell, straight out of the DR, would, throughout her teaching career, seek to neutralize.

With each new load of laundry and books thrown into the back seat, the VW shook just a little, moved with gravity just a little further – who used emergency brakes back then? Until finally, as if it had a mind of its own, the VW broke free and rolled, slowly but deliberately, down the hill and right over the sunbathers – who although a little startled, escaped lasting injury.

When Nellie told me the story, she might not have been as devastated and animated as I would have expected – I had some sense – now I might be imagining this – that these sunbathers – maybe just subconsciously – had provoked her. And this is when I knew that Nellie was the OG, she was for real!

Nellie had the gift of being able to communicate and develop connection, intimately and with total strangers. As my son wrote to Bob on Thanksgiving Day:

Hi Bob this Jack Shubin. I just want to say how sorry I am for your loss. She was an amazing woman. I have a very good memory of being on some sort of boat with her (we were fishing) and her talking to a stranger and her becoming his best friend in like 5 minutes. When I was with you I was like this lady's crazy, but as I got older it was incredibly admirable and showed to me how amazing she was.

Conversations with Nellie were long and luxurious – her mellifluous and lyrical voice became the soundtrack of our long walks together – there are few things more precious to me than my hiking conversations with Nellie that were so consuming and in the moment, that I failed to notice the slogging death marches we were on going up the side of a mountain or to a distant light house at a beaches' end.

Even though Nellie could talk – and boy could she ever – every word counted and every question moved some ball, some purpose, forward. Nellie asked questions both because she was forever curious about your life and because she was a teacher, to help you uncover some hidden truth or to actualize your potential. My connection with Nellie, a connection which so many of you also had with her, was one within which I felt safe being vulnerable. Nell asked me the kinds of questions that gave me license to share, often for the first time, difficult, affirming, or often constructively self-critical truths. Nellie was the presence in my life, our lives, that made us feel that it was safe to take risks, to fail. There was no judgment – I just knew, despite my flaws, that she had my back.

Nellie was a woman of action – who got shit done – who made lists – who made it a point to stay connected. Nellie was empathic – not only with those who were in pain but with those who, purposefully or inadvertently, had caused pain. Nellie was warmth and admiration – she was interested and present and hardly ever had an unkind word to say about anyone – I say hardly ever because Nellie was never shy about expressing her disdain for misogynist male authors – Hemingway is pretty dam lucky that he never sunbathed near one of her cars.

There are so many things that I will miss –

I will miss our discussions about children – how she remembered every detail – and asked follow up questions – if I told her in September that a kid was starting a project she would – without fail – inquire in the next conversation about how it was going.

I will miss talking about food, going food shopping with her, cooking meals together, walking generations of dogs with her, exchanging book titles and book reviews – talking about literature

I will miss how we always tried to find a week or a long weekend, or a "window" as Nellie would put it – to be together.

How she loved my kids and the sometimes rotating chaste of characters in my life who she never treated as some appendage of me but as interesting and compelling people who fascinated her in their own right.

The way she talked about and fiercely loved her students – how hard she worked to understand the contexts of their lives and how to harness their challenges and trauma and turn it into powerful and empowering expression.

I will miss how she always, always found something to admire – not only in the people who played central roles in her life – but also in those she encountered by chance, in a supermarket line, in a coffee shop – on a fishing boat.

She was, at so many points in our long history together, my sweet, sweet relief.

The last few years of Nellie's life – since her diagnosis – there was an unhurried but urgent quest for more and more living and loving. I noticed a new kind of beautiful, gentle, nurturing, blossoming love between Nellie and Bob. A fervent desire to find windows to visit with students and friends and explore bucket list destinations – it seemed that COVID and not her illness was the only thing that held her back –and ironically, it was COVID that gave her so much time with Sophia and Lucy.

When I think of Nellie's death, I am reminded of a quote from one of her favorite authors, Toni Morrison, "We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives." Nellie would tell us – has taught us – that we should invest in our connections – in simple, old school, face to face, listening and talking. That we must explore our language and the purposefulness of what we chose to share and the questions that we ask – that this is indeed the measure of a life and using that as a metric, Nellie's life was extraordinarily important, consequential, and well lived.

My name is Evelyn Begody

I'm a friend of Nell. We met in Santa Fe, and we've been friends since. I'm not sure the year for that. But she was the first person who, ah, we just hit it off. We had a lot of things to say. So much that sometimes we stayed up too late. It's been a wonderful story, journey in knowing Nell. Words I can describe Nell, words that come to mind are "loving light," "golden light," and her beautiful laughter. And I think it's with that in mind that I wrote the poem that you'll be hearing soon. I hope you like it. I would like to say, Nell is a great poet. And Nell is greatness. Thank you for letting me share.

Talking to Nell (Evelyn Begody – 12/18/2021, read by Cris Crocker)

Nell dear, I remember we loved to gossip late into the night when we studied in Santa Fe even though you giggled, "We shouldn't do this."

We laughed at people's antics until we heard a neighbor advise, "Maybe you should close your window."

You froze in guilty horror.

You closed that offending window, then we erupted into laughter and we gossiped a little more, just for good measure because we weren't quite finished.

On that same campus, we hiked a loop trail in the evening. Once you asked me about my favorite Eudora Welty story, so as we bobbled around on that cactus-laced trail, under that moonlit night, I paraphrased "The Worn Path." That was one of my favorite hikes with you because I felt that balance of fear and awe—fear I'd step into a prickly friend and awe of Phoenix Jackson. Now I see you and her are ancient souls on an infinite journey.

The morning you left that campus, I was sad to think my evening hike would be by myself, so after dinner, I climbed Moon Mountain. I wasn't brave like you, so every passerby I saw, I asked, "Did you see a curly-haired woman this tall?" motioning with my hand above my height.

They all said, "No." I pretended you were just ahead of me, so every once in a while I yelled, "I'm catching up with you, Nell!" as loudly as I could. Near the top, two people said, "You might have beaten Nell because we haven't seen her."

I answered, "Oh gosh, I bet I have." That evening I missed our night talks.

A year later in Vermont, we continued to hike long trails. We swam in ponds. We had a young charge name Nate, who trusted your navigation.

Once we climbed higher and higher on a lonely trail early on Sunday until we reached a cabin next to a mountaintop pond. Curiosity made us peek into it. We saw a room with a sleeping bag before we shut that door quietly to seal that solitude.

One evening as I followed you after a long walk, I was dragging my ass, maybe six feet behind me, when I asked, "What keeps you going, Nell?"

You answered in your signature squeaky laugh, "Sheer dumb will."

I liked walking behind you because I felt safe in being slow.

Later after you graduated from Lincoln College in Oxford, we decided to hike in the Grand Canyon because we were sickened by the new White House occupant, and I promised you our hike would heal and revive us.

We went down the South Kaibab and then we walked west on the curvy West Tonto Trail. We ate Tarahumara cookies I made from blue corn meal, chia seeds, and pecans that you compared to the local rocks. You also ate an apple to the stem. Such religion to the essence, Nell.

This year I returned to the Grand Canyon the day before Thanksgiving. I stood in Indian Gardens and studied the canyon walls and rim as reflected on our 2016 hike. I will return there later this month and I will eat an avocado and an apple as I sit on a rock with my feet dangling off freely, as you did.

Nell dear, stay near me on that hike and future ones in that scared space. Wherever you are, find some cool trails so when I cross over we'll hike, and I'll tell you the latest gossip.

Ahenewa

Many people spoke today about Nell's impact on their lives as a friend, as a confidant, and as a mentor. We are here today to speak about her impact on the faculty at Henry Clay and on the lives of her students. Before we speak, Nathan and I probably should let you know that we plan to use this opportunity to drop as many obscure literary references as we possibly can because we are English teachers and our degrees give us an extremely limited set of gifts.

My name is Ahenewa El-Amin and I have been teaching at Henry Clay for over 20 years. I have worked with hundreds of teachers in multiple capacities throughout my tenure and I hope you believe me when I say that it is unbelievably rare to have a coworker whose soul embraces you where are you are as a professional, helps guide you through the next steps of your career, and most importantly helps hold you up through the absolute misery of being a teacher.

I have never met anyone like Nell Whitman, and I don't think I ever will again in my life.

I am a voracious reader and Nell matched and surpassed my energy. She was a kindred soul who could speak for hours about fictional characters and how authors articulate the true meaning of life. At the time she first arrived, I was one of two core teachers at HCHS who were not white teaching at a school named for one of Kentucky's most celebrated slave owners. Having once been chastised by a parent for teaching Shakespeare's Othello because it was 'too black,' I felt enormous pressure to avoid offering works outside the 'traditional' canon. Nell, though, was much braver than I and up until her last day in the classroom she insisted on showing her students the whole world.

Weeks after our first hour-long talk about books, Nell solidified our bond when she offered me a pair of pants that were now too big for her because she had lost weight. (Some of you may be familiar with the teen book about girls and traveling pants and relationships.) Nell and I did not have pants that helped us find hot guys–she already had Bob and I was pretty comfortable just looking at the picture of Frank X Walker on the back of Affrilachia. Instead of pants like those, we had a pair of pants that fit us perfectly once we gained 20 pounds over what we considered our 'skinny' weight and with only a little bit of schadenfreude, we exchanged those pants back-and-forth between us until she made her final trek to my front door to laughingly hand me a tote full of 'big girl pants'.

By the end of the year, Nell invited me on our very first date. Appropriately, she invited me to go look at I mean listen to Frank X Walker read from his new book of poetry.

I say appropriately because words were very important to Nell. She tried to infuse students with the love of words and some of my fondest memories will be the poetry slams between our AP classes. She remained faithful to her love of words to the end. Her diagnosis shook the HCHS community and many students reached out to see what they could do to help. Unlike me who would have asked for a 2020 Highlander, Nell encouraged students to support her by "promoting the love and appreciation for reading in some way."

Nathan

Nell's passion for helping those around her was evident the first time I met her at Henry Clay. She had a way of stopping whatever she was doing and focusing on you in the conversation. Nell always made you feel seen–made you feel heard.

So many days I walk by her old classroom and still feel like I will be able to see her in there–curls tossed to one side–typing away on her laptop, changing the world one lesson at a time. I still feel like I will be able to barge into her room unannounced armed with a random literature question that she will undoubtedly know the answer to; not only that, but she will also provide additional reading later in the form of a texted article link with the message: "Made me think of you. Xoxo Nellie."

Nell was a lifelong learner, and actually encouraged me to attend Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English–something I would have been too afraid to do on my own. But the Nell I knew was fearless. In 2015, we took a road trip to Vermont and Nell introduced me to the magic of the mountain. I remember walking through the forest chatting about Robert Frost and the importance of taking "The Road Not Taken" as we hiked in our Chacos under the "Birches." The end of that summer, we karaoked to Regina Spektor's "Samson" up the mountain before heading to Maine.

I remember flying to England with Nell in 2016. She stated that she loved to peel an orange on a plane because the gorgeous scent filled the cabin. As we ascended, Nell peeled her orange and worked a crossword puzzle with me. It's those small moments that I remember most vividly. Nell had the ability to make the ordinary, the small, those fleeting moments in life that we often experience without ever really reflecting on… feel gorgeous and luxurious and important.

Nell had a way of holding up a mirror to you and reflecting back the self that you wanted to be–your best self. As Toni Morrison states: "She [was] a friend of my mind. She gather[ed] me… the pieces I am, she gather[ed] them and [gave] them back to me in all the right order." Because of this, she could skillfully bring people together–through experiences, through stories, through literature.

Ahenewa

Gathering the pieces and putting things back together was what Nell helped the English department at Henry Clay do. When she first started her tenure at Clay, we were…if not a divided department…certainly one that was fractured by dissension. Nell had a way of ignoring petty politics and insisting that we see one another. She went to every baby shower, contributed to every event, and most importantly to the faculty as a whole– she simply refused to ignore anyone's humanity. Through her eyes, it was easy to see people not as rivals for positions or as enemies holding opposing viewpoints. It was evident that she saw your soul and she helped you see good in others. My department is forever stronger because Nell Whitman was a part of it.

On the plane with Nathan, she peeled an orange so that everyone could benefit from the fragrance. At Henry Clay, she peeled away layers of mistrust and helped us connect. By making small connections she helped bring the department together.

We have so many stories of the small, but powerful connections she wove. After having a brief conversation with David Buchanan, who as an ESL teacher exists on the periphery, she insisted on a lunch-time collaboration of Academy and ESL students. After listening to me complain about Nathan's prickly personality, she casually invited us to discuss books together so we could see that we had more in common than we had differences. She was human and she recognized humanity in all.

And that acknowledgment of our own humanity is why we grieve her fiercely.

Nathan

Grief is an interesting thing. It takes your memories and makes a kaleidoscope of them. Robert Frost's poem posits that nothing gold can stay, and William Shakespeare's Hamlet asserts the importance of remembering. The memories that we all have of Nell–those golden, gorgeous moments–we will all carry them forward with us and we will be better people for it. The friendships that she inspired and made possible will serve as her legacy. To know Nell was to love Nell–and if you are Nell's people, then you must also be my people. So to Nell we say, we will remember. We will learn. We will love.

Ahenewa

I hope you understand that Nell's love made an immeasurable impact in our little corner of the world. However, her gift to us came at a cost. Spending time with students, mentoring young teachers, validating the experiences of colleagues, took away from time that could have been spent with her own husband and children.

We would like to take a moment to thank Bob, Sophia and Lucy for sharing your wife and mother with us.

Nathan quoted Morrison earlier and I think it is appropriate to do so once again. Despite objections and complaints, Nell fearlessly insisted that students face the brutality of life shown in Toni Morrison's Beloved, because like many English teachers she saw it as a story of love for life, love for one's self...a story featuring a woman–who like most women–had to be reminded that she was "her own best thing."

I only saw Nell cry once after her diagnosis. "Ahenewa," she said to me, "I'm going to be gone soon and the only thing I want to know is that there are people in this world who love my daughters. I want them to know how valuable they are."

Ladies, we love you and we can never replace your mother, but I speak for the English department when I say we can give you stories whenever you want them. Your mother knew this about us, and I know this about you…

My loves, you are your own best thing.

I brought my clipboard so I could pretend I'm a teacher.

So, I wasn't going to speak because I didn't know if I could do it. And then I waited until the end, like an idiot.

Ahm, so I'm really glad that Andy included Jack's impression of Nell. You know, who is this crazy woman, as he thought as a young boy. And you know, we thought it all the time, too. But I don't ... here's the thing, I don't think any of her interlocutor's ever felt that way. And... it was amazing. She would come back and she would tell us the intimate details that people would relate to her. It was unbelievable. I just never understood how she did that. Ahm, and you know, she died on Thanksgiving. And so I just want to talk about what she gave me, which was you. All your intimate details.

Ahm, and but all of you, all of you here, in person, all of you remote, in Europe, in England, in Germany, in France, in Israel, the Navajo Nation, the Inter-mountain West, across the US, especially Maryland with Eleanor, and Penelope, and Frank. Sophia and Lucy. This is what she's given me.

So, I want to just want to end with a memory that I have with Nellie. It's my first memory of Nellie. And, so I'm a teacher. So, I want to talk about how to have a memory. And you laugh. But I've lost people in my life, and I remember feeling very sad after years that I would be losing them, that I couldn't remember them. And that I would question whether I had a real memory or whether it was a picture that I was remembering. And it really distressed me for a long time. And I then I finally decided that it wasn't distressing at all. And then I learned how to remember in a way that really brought the memory, the real memory, back, which is not remember something static but to remember an event, an occurrence, an encounter, a time with a person.

And so the time that I remember is when I first met her at a bookstore. Yes! Bookstore. Penelope, her sister, hired me 'cause of a joke I made. And I was working, I was the book boxer. I boxed up the books for the people who ... It was a new age bookstore, by the way, which is hilarious but... They had a great Near East section, in my defense. I had the, ugh, I had to set the boxes out and fill them up and ship them off to our customers. And Nellie would come up and she... And I remember the first time I saw her, I remember the first time I saw her because she came up and she had this smile. And she had this little squiggly eye. To me it was her left eye, but to her it was her right eye. You know, when she smiled, she had this little squiggly eye. And that's when I fell in love with her, actually. And I thought at that time, that summer, I think I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this woman, which is what we've done.

And, ahm, I can't tell you how meaningful it is for me, for the girls, Sophia and Lucy, and all of Nell's family, here and remote, that you could help us remember her and celebrate her. And what a badass, I'm telling you man. Uhm, so I really am thankful and grateful and ... here we are. This is the end, of the memorial service. So, there's some food in the back. I hope you stay and reminisce with us. And thanks again. We love you.

Nellie,

the stars have you now
and they are all the better for it:
for your tremulous light
and your bright, warm energy.
For your simplicity
and your easy laugh
and your buoyant voice,
for your brave high cheekbones
and the chispa in your playful eyes.
For the field of freckles
and the meadows of your curls,
for the bunny in your smile,
so sweet.
They are so much better for it
for your well-lived life.

We will want to remember,
to have you in our dreams
so we can visit once again:
discuss a book,
ponder the world,
admire life.
So we can wash dishes over
the kitchen sink.

To catch a glimpse,
to remember you
in all that is yours
and now is ours.
(The stars will not do.)
Your bright, intense, intelligent light.

We will catch glimpses of you
wherever we can:
in a wrinkle on a nose,
the angles of a face,
the profile of a head,
in a turn of phrase!
Your words! Your many, lovely, rich,
expressive words!
To remember you,
to feel you back
vividly for an instant
in our minds.

Those stars,
those lucky, distant, ill-timed stars.
They shine all the brighter
for having you!

Nell came into the world in New York City, March 24, 1966, the left-handed, right-brained, less hurried of (unanticipated!) girl twins. The morning of her surprise arrival, her father Ray's economics doctoral class at Columbia was diverted into a discussion of economies of scale of the birth of multiples. Her mom Eleanor simply practiced them, nursing the two babies at once, rescuing time for her elder daughter Penelope, herself, and her other great love, books. Work in publishing had given Eleanor an appreciation of not just words, not just stories, but books. That love was catching: Eleanor's namesake Nell would become an avid reader, an English teacher and a poet. Her core self was something more elemental: a humanist. In this she had many teachers but specially her godmother, Margaret Kimble.

A move to University Park, Maryland couldn't quite shake the New Yorker out of the Eleanors, though living in a once-oak forest lent another sort of beauty to their days. Nell and her sisters played hide-and-seek amidst azalea blossoms and, come winter, piled one atop another on their Flexible Flyers, the better to catapult down the snowy streets of their neighborhood. School was a walk away. Weekends found the family on Capitol Hill in D.C. for an infusion of the urban and the life of the spirit at St. Mark's Church. The gendered space of Girl Scouts—baking campfire cakes in suburban parks?!—
and cotillion—ballroom dancing for debutantes?!—set the stage for rebellions to come. Holidays meant Amtrak-ing to see Margaret in Manhattan or ice skating with Uncle Rich in the Poconos or beach camping with friends in Assateague. Summers were for music camp and, best of all, Maine: a cabin surrounded by fir trees and blueberry bushes, rocky islands on the horizon and bracing swims through swirling kelp, plus a gorgeous little library full of well-thumbed, color-plated editions of children's books.

By junior high, Nell was both a teacher's aide and a people gatherer. In high school, she began tutoring and cemented a friend group who stood by her all her life. Theirs was a big, public school with students from all over the world. Her first tutee was Cambodian, her first internship at the Department of Education. Her first overseas trip was a visit home with the family's Bolivian housemate to a tiny town on the Amazon River in Brazil. Nell joined AFS, an international exchange program, which sent her to the Dominican Republic for a second senior year in Santiago de los Caballeros. She returned from the island nation with a love of merengue, papaya and concón (the crunchy rice at the bottom of the pot) but most of all her Dominican friends and host family.

Middlebury College in Vermont seemed a cloister after life in the D.R. Nell transferred to George Washington University, riding D.C. buses from her group house on Capitol Hill to finish her degree in humanities. While working alongside her sister Penelope in a bookshop in Georgetown, she met her life partner Bob Sandmeyer, a student of philosophy and classics at G.W. What to do but surrender to the pull of the old world? They socked money away until they could spend a year together scouring Europe from the tip of Portugal to western Turkey, then south to Israel.

Home again in D.C., Nell worked in international exchange and Red Cross blood-banking and Bob at the Nature Conservancy. They married at St Mark's on the Hill in 1993, honeymooning in Patagonia. Their explorations of the Rockies continued in graduate school, criss-crossing the mountains between Fort Collins, Colorado, where Bob studied environmental ethics and Nell teaching, and Paonia, a singular town on the Western Slope where Nell taught English and Spanish and drama. In the shadow of Mt Lamborn, Nell gave birth to their first daughter Sophia.

Then the East called them back: doctoral studies in philosophy for Bob at the University of Kentucky and teaching for Nell. The family reluctantly left the West and fast friends, and made life anew in Lexington, where they were graced by Lucy's birth. Happily, Nell's sister Penelope was living in Lexington with her husband Kevin, her step-son Brooks and their son Franklin. The cousins grew up together. In good time, the subtler beauties of Kentucky revealed themselves: riding horses in the Bluegrass, apple picking, hikes through rhododendrons in the Gorge, swims in the Kentucky River, the fiery autumn colors and sparkle of ice storms in the maple trees, long walks in the re-wilding meadows on Hisle Farm. As ever, it was the people–students and colleagues, neighbors, and friends, who inspired her with their commitment to family, to community, to place. They, together with Bob and their inimitable daughters, made her life in Kentucky sing. But interactions with strangers fortified her too: Nell learned the life story of everyone she met in seconds flat and carried them with her.

This broad curiosity about the world made forays away from home a lifeline: a year in Heidelberg, Germany, when their girls were small and Bob was researching phenomenology; time with her twin and her partner Louis in San Francisco and Virginia Beach. Trips to the Sierra Nevada, Big Bend, Morocco, Mexico, Taos, and New York City. Time with her mom on Orrs Island, in London, Siena, Quogue. With family and friends from Atlanta to Window Rock, State College to Capitola, England, Germany, and just weeks ago, in Aix-les-Bains and Rome.

Ever the humanist, Nell taught a little bit of everything at every level in Fayette County Schools from Florence Crittenton School for pregnant teens to the Liberal Arts Academy at Henry Clay.

Trailed by a cascade of papers, her laugh brightening the halls, she worked to inspire a love of language, of learning, and of intercultural understanding. In later years, Kentucky gave her a gift, a scholarship to pursue a literature masters at the Bread Loaf School of English. Thanks to two summers drinking in beauty and books in Oxford's Bodleian Library, two reveling in New Mexico's landscapes in Santa Fe, and one in Vermont, Nell's poet self emerged.

Some people thrive and create in solitude. Not Nell. In motion, with some quiet and some chaos, much beauty, local food, a proper cappuccino, abundant sunlight and most of all people all around her, Nell shone like no other.