Thank you, Larry.

All of life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. - Martin Luther King, Jr., paraphrasing Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac

I went to the funeral of an amazing man today, a man whom I have never met. He was one of United Way's major donors and an integral champion of our community's most pressing needs (side note: I still find it somewhat astounding that these are the sorts of things I do as a part of my gainful employment). Speaker after speaker stood up to tell stories of how this man had impacted their lives. Father, grandfather, business associate, poker buddy, fraternity brother, community advocate, volunteer fundraiser, CEO. Every story was much the same - a man of integrity, generosity, and respect for his fellow man.

Even though I never met Larry, he has impacted my life in more ways than I'm sure anyone sitting there today ever knew. He and his family gave a large gift to our organization to leave their legacy to the community through the continued work of United Way. I was the one who procured this gift, working with his daughter. For my efforts, I was awarded a generous bonus and eventually a promotion. While I'm sure Larry and his family would not have expected for me to receive a bonus as a result of their charity, this bonus had a subsequent domino effect on my life. With it, we made a down payment on our first house. Because we bought a house and felt more grounded, we decided we would be ready for a child, which will no doubt change our lives forever in approximately 22 weeks. Morever, our investment in our house is the first step in a long process of achieving our eventual goal of owning expansive recreational ranch property out West and teaching others about nature. As I listened to one of the speakers today, he said that Larry was the embodiment of "If you can dream it, you can achieve it." I'd like to think that I would be doing Larry proud by using his generous example to acheive our dreams and impact the lives of others.

I know, through examples like this, that what Aldo Leopold first wrote and what Martin Luther King, Jr. later made famous is true: all life is interrelated, sometimes in the most tenuous ways. And that is why we should all do what Larry said was his favorite quote: "Make what you do today important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it."