I lost a classmate I hardly knew, but his life proved we weren't all bad
Due to circumstances beyond my knowledge at the time--i.e. had I known what this school was like, I would NEVER have applied to go there--I spent my senior year of high school at a boarding school in Massachusetts. It turned out fluctuating between a bad joke and something dreamed up by either Pat Conroy or the screenwriters if the movie "IF." Please understand--this was MY view of the place. Plenty (or maybe even most) of my classmates seemed to think the place was wonderful. When I got this notice, sent out to all members of the class of 1970, it started out with the predictable "as most of you have heard by now," translated out as "except for you asshole outsiders with whom we never interacted, then or now."
I was a one of a tiny group of rebels who "didn't fit in." The "preppies" ignored us, and we pretty much ignored them, which meant that we were ghosts. Sorta there, but not really. The administration despised us and treated us as mistakes made by the admissions committee.
But among the preppie types, there were apparently a few good eggs hidden among the herd. One, a guy named Jim Steinberg, ended up as one of Obama's foreign policy advisers. Another, this guy who just died, dedicated his life to AIDS research, and fighting to make AIDS something less than the death sentence it was 40 years ago. He was born in Holland, which I didn't know, but then, I didn't know much of anything about that crowd. I stared at the photo like at that of a stranger. I had a vague recollection of that the guy looked like--at age 18.
When I consider that Bush Sr. and Jr. graduated from this school, I used to lump all the non-rebels into one category. Obviously we didn't all turn out as bad as one imagines the graduates of schools like this end up being. After all, it looks like this guy did a lot more for humanity than I ever will.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsobserver/obituary.aspx?n=charles-michael-van-der-horst&pid=193164086
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He sure had an interesting, full life! Although 67 is way too young, he packed a lot into those years.
He lived well, he did a lot of good and I hope he was happy. It looks like he was.
There are good people everywhere, even in places like your school. It's easy to not see them among the crowd that looks privileged or uncaring.
And I would not be so quick to say that you've done nothing for humanity! Few of us can leave a mark the way he did, but there are always the contributions by us ordinary mortals that help stitch together all of us in a web of love and intelligent caring. You have certainly done all of that.
have been devastated by his death. I knew him as a social activist from the Moral Mondays started by Rev. Dr. Wm Barber II. The White Coats. He had interns and docs and medical students fired up to attend the protests at the Legislature trying to get expansion of Medicaid. He got my psychiatrist husband to go out and buy a white coat--which he hadn't worn in years--to wear to a Moral Mondays protest several years ago.
Charlie was amazing. A phenomenal guy. A real leader here in NC. One of my favorite photos of him which captured his fun-loving personality and zeal for social justice, was this one where he was being arrested at a Moral Mondays event.
Your long ago classmate was a real hero who touched the lives of so many people. He is really going to be missed.
