Remembering Special Friends -- Rick and David

The deaths of two good friends from my past, both leaving us within the last two weeks, has thrown me back emotionally to a morning in late 2003, when Elder Lois Berkeley of Kake, Alaska called me to tell me that Rick Mills was missing. Rick, 43, and his son David, 14, and his good friend Gery Davies, 28, left Kake on Tuesday morning, December 30, in a 16-foot skiff to hunt deer on the southern part of Admiralty Island. They were expected home that night.

Sadly they never made it back home. Bad weather and a dangerous sea claimed their lives, leaving the village of Kake devastated, especially Gery and Rick's families. What a blow it was to Rick's wife Judy, and his surviving children, Rae Ann, Johnny and Chelsea. It was also a major trauma for the Kake Memorial Presbyterian Church, where Rick was an elder and David was key member of the youth fellowship. They were both beloved bythe people of Kake.

When friends die it makes you take a strong stark look at your own mortality. It also makes you cherish the memories of times with the friends you lost. Without a doubt, Rick Mills made the world a better place with his strong commitment to family, to church, and to children and youth. Now, over two and a half years later, my family and I still feel a great loss. The world became lot worse off without Rick Mills in it. He was a very special person.

He was a great friend and teacher, a person who loved his family dearly, who was a pillar of his church, and a tower in his community. His life was a special blessing to all of us who knew him. He loved life and he loved people. He has been be sorely missed by his family and his village.

His passing seemed too quick – he was too young, too vibrant, he had so much to give, he was too important to his family and village – yet he was gone, and many folks were left with gaping holes where their hearts should be beating. His life light burned brightly and warmed us all for a while, and now the world was darker and the winter seemed colder.

But Rick would urge us to go on and do our best. Rick's faith was always steadfast. He was a pillar of the church and community, doing good deeds for many people. Only a few people knew about many of the special things he did, because Rick did not seek the limelight. He just tried to do what was right, day after day, year after year. He touched many with his acts of compassion.

He was a wise mentor, explaining Tlingit ways to me, and taking me on my first seaweed-gathering trip, when he kidded me about my looking much like a wounded walrus as I slid around the rocks as I grabbed the precious seaweed. We had a lot of fun gathering seaweed and fishing, and he taught me so much about the history of Kake and its people. I will forever be thankful for his kindness and his good advice and expert assistance.

I remember how much he loved his chosen profession of teaching and how dedicated he was to the school system and the children of Kake. I had thought he might become a pastor – he certainly had the gifts for it – but he saw teaching as his truest calling. He was an advocate for the youth. He helped many a young person to grow strong and to learn to make the right choices.

He lived to help the children, in any way that he could. They were the future of the village and he helped them prepare for their futures. But he was also a custodian of the past as a teacher of Tlingit history and he took that job very seriously. He respected the elders and the rich history of the people and the culture.

He loved the little church that we served together, and he and Judy helped it survive and grow with their faithful service and enthusiastic leadership. He was always there when you needed a hand, whether to say prayers, or visit the sick, or lead communion services, or clean up after a potluck. His gift of hospitality was abundant, and he helped four Village Youth Ministers feel at home in Kake as they loved and nurtured the children of the village. I know that John Schwartz, John White, Neris Bicunias and Kathy March will always be grateful for the love and care extended to them by Rick and Judy and their wonderful children.

The VYM program worked because of Rick and Judy. The same might also be said for the various Mission Groups that came in to lead Vacation Bible Schools in Kake. If Rick and Judy were in town, they were there helping us to teach the children and to make the groups from the lower 48 feel welcome. Rick had a knack for making people smile. He had a gift for sharing with others the things that God had given him. He opened his home and his heart to everyone he met, in Christian love.

Rick loved his family. He cherished the time with his wife and children as much as any man I have ever known. We went on some wonderful cookouts to beaches with another beloved family, the Kondros, and out to Point McCartney with the whole family and it was evident what a good and loving father he was to his children. And all of his children were special to us. David was such a good boy. He was smart and handsome and friendly and had so much promise.

One of the moments I will always remember with Rick was when he and I came across sports journalist Byron Ricks, while the author and his wife Maren were on an epic kayaking trip through the Inside Passage. They were resting on an island near one of Rick Mills' favorite seaweed gathring spots. Rick invited them back to Kake for shelter in the Presbyterian church. So we got to spend some time with the adventurous couple, and my wife's good cooking even made it into Byron's remarkable journal of their journey, all because of Rick's natural hospitality.

Rick Mills was always the gracious host. That little visit to Kake made it into a chapter in the wondrous book, "Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage", which is chock full of wisdom and adventure, and a good read that goes way beyond kayaking. (It is still available on the internet.) In those poetic pages you get a snapshot of the wisdom and depth of Rick Mills. Rick was a joy to know. He was unforgettable.