Goodbye Roger

[ashling]

[Summer Hathaway]

1. What an incredibly beautiful quote

Thank you for sharing it.

[ashling]

2. You are very welcome

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. He is gone from us...

His words will always remain.

Gentle passage, Roger...

[renate]

4. he truly was kind--and here's a one-degree-of-separation example

A friend of mine wrote an op-ed for his (and Ebert's) home-town newspaper, and Roger took the time to send him a handwritten note praising his writing. He certainly didn't have to do that, but can you imagine the impact on an aspiring writer of getting an unexpected personal note of praise from the great Roger Ebert? What a gift. What a sweet, sweet, generous, and totally kind thing for Roger to do.

For years I thought of Roger Ebert as just a film critic (whose show I never missed when he was on TV). It's only been in the past 10 or so years that I've read his other writing (including his book) and realized what a truly admirable human being he was. I think if his wife and family ever look to the Internet for solace, they will find enough words of praise here to occupy them for decades, and rightly so.