Bill Hearne, A remembrance.

Oncologists have an expression that’s appropriate to remember tonight – “Eat Dessert First.” “Eat Dessert First” – you never know what’s next. It’s the way Bill Hearne lived his life up until the very end and it’s a fitting way for us to honor him tonight.

As many of you may know, I’m in the midst of the personal upheaval from an unexpected separation just shy of my 30th anniversary this August. With Bill’s passing that makes two very sad August anniversaries for me this year, mine and Oven Door’s.

During this period of turmoil in my life I have been reminded, on a daily basis, of how incredibly lucky I am to belong to this group Bill helped to found. Many of you have opened your homes and your hearts to me, and if I haven’t said it often enough, loudly enough, or publicly enough – I love you all.

My personal crisis led me to reflect on how important Oven Door is in my life. My renewed appreciation for the community of friends here propelled me to ask Bill, just before he left for Denali , if I might have a chance to speak at the ODR 30th Anniversary party – remarks I’d imagined would be delivered with him standing nearby. It was, serendipitously, a chance for me to tell Bill how much of a positive influence he had been on my life and how important ODR was to me.

Sadly, my last message to Bill, a note of encouragement sent just last night never reached him – “Watching in with amazement from afar as you pursue just another ‘technical’ climb.” All too often we miss opportunities to speak from the heart to our friends and family — it is sudden, unexpected losses like this that remind us to seize those moments, to say those words, and to Eat Dessert First.

What I had planned to address at the 30th Anniversary party was “How is it that ODR came to be what it is?” Ask someone to imagine what might happen if a group of people from their 20s to their 60s, from all walks of life, gathered each Saturday morning to run. They’d never conjure up what we have and who we are.

Now bear with me … The Neurologist in me likened the interconnections amongst runners to the interconnections amongst brain cells. Neuroscientists can delve into the great complexities of individual neurons – studying their highly branched anatomy, their biochemistry, and their physiology. No matter how much they learn about the intricacy and beauty of the individual neurons they will never be able to infer what a collection of such neurons could do. They are powerless to explain the transcendent properties of consciousness, emotions or soul that arise from the brain as a whole.

So too, if we were to look at any runner in the group we would see someone of intricacy and beauty (I’d imagined, at this moment, slowly turning towards Bill and saying “well, sometimes you just have to settle for intricacy”! ). We could never imagine that from a collection of runners would raise a community with the transcendent properties of support, love and family that are the hallmarks of ODR. It was Bill Hearne’s magic, his transforming force that brought us and kept us together, that made us each better individuals, and made us collectively much more than the sum of our parts. That’s why Bill’s spirit will live on forever in each of us.

RIP, Rest in peace – that’s a fitting epitaph for most, but for Bill, it doesn’t fit – it seems more like a curse. If you’ll permit me a moment of poetic license, “Recreate in Perpetuity” seems a more apt blessing. “Recreate in Perpetuity” is what Bill would want to do, that’s what Bill did do, and that’s how we’ll remember him.

So tonight, and in the many years to come, let us raise our eyes skyward and remember Bill Hearne, whose legacy to each of us is an extra measure of physical and emotional health, who urged us by his example to live full and connected lives, and who gave us each a second family to be there for us in good times and in bad.

Goodbye my friend, and Happy Trails.

Harold Lesser
May 8, 2009