Comings and Goings
Hudson Catholic is more than a school. It is a family. That is something we have heard often, and it is something that we saw proven true this past year in ways we probably couldn’t have imagined before April 2008.
Like any other family, we celebrate the good times and the milestones in our family members’ lives. Like any other family, we mourn and remember those members of our family who have gone before us. But we also celebrate their lives.
As we continue developing the e-newsletter, we want to make sure we take the time to celebrate, as well as the time to commemorate our lost Hawks; so we have created “Comings and Goings.”
We encourage our readers to submit marriage, birth, promotion notices, and anything else note-worthy. We will try our best to publish as many as possible each month.
Here is the first one we received.
Congratulations to David Strano,’97, and his wife Stephanie, who welcomed their first child, Alexander David Strano, into the world on December 4, 2008. May God bless you all.
We also would like anyone who would like to write about a fellow Hawk or faculty member who has gone before us to submit your remembrance to bslattery@hudsoncatholic.org. We want to remember and celebrate the lives of those who journeyed with us during our time at Hudson Catholic.
For this first addition, Jim Solenksy, ’70, has shared with us a touching remembrance of a classmate of his.
Here it is:
Rich Kimball, ’70, didn't have a great start in life. He grew up in the Duncan projects without a dad. He became a junkie and wound up living in homeless shelters and shooting galleries, sharing needles with strangers. He could have easily given up and become the faceless, anonymous statistic society defines addicts as being. But something wouldn't let him do that. Something still lingered in him, and, with it, he found his way back. He kicked his addictions, went back to school, and eventually got his Masters in microbiology.
I lost contact with him shortly after Hudson, but he found me and we emailed for a time. That's how I got to know about his life. Then it stopped. Richie died a few years ago, a lot sooner than he should have. He died from the Hepatitis-C he got sharing needles. It was the disease he had been living with for years...the disease for which he had dedicated his life to help find a cure. He knew it was his fault, but he had no problem looking in the mirror and accepting who he saw.
Rich Kimball's life isn't the kind that should be put up on a pedestal and glorified. He screwed up in a big way. But he made it right, and that's what should be noticed and respected. He even found time to give back and help others on the same downward spiral he escaped from. He didn't live as long as the rest of us, but his journey thru life was longer than any one of ours will ever be. He got knocked down a lot but always found a way to get back up. I'm glad for him.
R.I.P. Richie.
Jim Solensky, ’70
