Greetings:

I believe Bob Blue passed away on March 17. There has been some confusion about the date because a lot of people received an e-mail two days later that said he had died "yesterday."

Be that as it may, I last saw Bob just a short while ago, on Sunday morning, January 29 of this year at the Johnson Chapel on the campus of Amherst College in Massachusetts. He was participating, as he often had, in a People's Music Network a cappella Songs of the Spirit session. That's kind of a leaderless hybrid between a Quaker meeting and a pub sing. Someone starts a song, usually a Freedom song or a Gospel song, and others join in until the song wells up, continues for a while, and then finally dies down. Then there are several seconds of silence before someone else feels moved to start another song. The session usually lasts about an hour and a half.

On this particular morning Bob appeared more lively and energetic than I had seen him in several years. He sang out loud, and he voice was remarkably clear, considering the advanced state of his multiple sclerosis. At one point during the session, Sandy Pliskin, a singer from Boston, stood up and started to sing a song called Tremors and Phlegm he had written in Bob's honor. While that may seem to be in awfully bad taste, it really wasn't. Everyone in the chapel, perhaps 200 people, stood and turned towards Bob as they picked up on the refrain. Bob himself seemed to get a great kick out of the song, and when it was over everyone remained standing and applauded Bob for several minutes.

A few days later I learned that Bob had fallen ill with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. Somehow he pulled through and returned home in mid-February. That he lasted so long is truly a miracle. Bob Blue was a person of enormous talent, and he was also a person of great courage, compassion, intellect, and humor. Those attributes are a rare combination in any human being. We should all feel blessed that he walked among us, even though it was for fewer than 58 years.

--- Steve Suffet