On Friday, April 25, Leonore Draper died in Chicago. I’ve known her almost 15 years and was in her wedding. For various reasons, each of us has thanked the other for saving our lives. This is what I offered in her memory at her memorial service in Houston. Just thought this was something some of you could take something from.
I talked to Connie last night for the first time since we lost Leonore, and she put it like only she could…
We all loved Leonore because she was crazy. You had no choice to love somebody that crazy.
She could say that because that’s her daughter. I can repeat it because…well, it was true.
When I met her, you could tell she needed some of that love. By the time she was done, she had so much love that she had enough to give even to people she’d never met.
She did what she wanted. She said what she wanted. She laughed if something was funny, even if the rest of us weren’t laughing. And before long, you’d be laughing yourself…even if you were the one everyone was laughing at.
And she sure was crazy about us. She was crazy about Jason, and the rest of us were crazy about him, because he was crazy enough to love her crazy forever.
She was crazy about Connie, Yolanda, Kiana and Khalin, and she’d give me an update on what they were doing every time I talked to her.
And she was crazy about her friends. Crazy enough to put my buddy George and I in her wedding. Crazy enough to let me lean on her when I didn’t want to lean on anyone, because she knew, even when we didn’t realize it, we were always leaning on each other.
And it’s crazy to think she’s gone.
In the last week, lots of people have asked me about Leonore because they were so impressed by what they read in the newspaper. The work she did to try to improve life in Chicago will forever make her a symbol of the work that’s left to do.
But she wasn’t a symbol to us. She was a human being, one far too complex to see as just one thing.
She was no saint, and she wasn’t perfect, but that’s what made her even more amazing and important.
While many will honor her and her work, we are here to remember her life. We knew her at her worst, and it’s what makes it so painful that we lost her at her best. And her best was her incredible ability to help make the rest of us better. Sometimes, we really weren’t trying to hear all that, but i can’t think of when i wasn’t better for listening.
I also can’t think of a time when I didn’t listen and she didn’t quickly remind me that I would have been better for listening.
But she helped when she could. She told us the truth when that’s all she could do. And she was there for us, no matter how it all turned out.
The last time I talked to Leonore, I told her “you sure are grown.” I admired her so much for that, for how reliable and responsible she was, and how comfortable she was being those things. She had become a woman that you couldn’t just count on. She knew we could count on her, and that allowed her to share with us so willingly.
I am proud when I think of the good that such a great friend did for others. I am glad others will be able to use her memory to keep helping others. I just wish all those people who think they knew Leonore had any idea how much more was there.
It wasn’t all pretty, but that made her more beautiful. It made her a shining example of what a wonderful person you can become when you don’t stop trying. The joy life can bring when you make it about more than yourself. The places you can go when you simply look at yourself and decide that you can do what you want, that you can do better, and you can bring others along with you.
I can say, proudly, that she helped bring me to where I am. And she will continue going great places with us from beyond. I just hope, one day, I can do the same for others that she did for us.
We love you, Leonore. We miss you. But we sure are glad we got to meet you, and all we can do is hope we meet again.
May 7, 2014
