Some very good people moving on

Yesterday the news broke that former UNC star Eric Montross had passed away after a relatively brief struggle with cancer. I was stunned. I knew he was sick, but had no idea he was that close, but that is how it should be because even though I am good friends with some people who are close to him and his family, nobody wants their cancer journey to be broadcast even semi-publicly.

Though I didn't know him well, every time I had ever seen him, whether in person or in video, he was doing something positive, usually raising money for some kind of cancer-related cause, whether Be Loud! Sophie or something else having to do with UNC's Lineberger Center. I spent more time on Facebook yesterday to see people's tributes to him, the best of which was Orange County Sherriff Charles Blackwood who shared about how Montross would come by his office when the Sherriff was out and move stuff around on his desk to mess with him. Good fun. But maybe the most moving was a picture of Montross near the bench with his arm around Coach Smith. It is hard sometimes to believe that Coach Smith has not been coach for over a quarter century and left us altogether about a decade ago. We are fortunate to have one of his players at the helm of the program now acting as lodestar.

Last week Liz Magill was defenestrated from her role as President of Penn after her admittedly suboptimal performance in Congress answering questions from Elyse Stefanik in too lawyerly a way. Liz was the first to pay for a few reasons: because her facial expressions were impolitic when she responded to questions posed specifically to elicit the answer she gave (answers very much on the advice of counsel); because Penn is dominated by Wharton and thus money; because photographers caught her at some very bad moments, and because she is blonde and blue-eyed and a Hillary Clinton proxy, easily sacrificeable. Liz was in my year in Branford College and was politically active from a young age and went out with (if memory serves correctly, and it may not) a guy named Bill from Arkansas. They were both a little too clean-scrubbed and positive for me, as my college years were kind of a dark time, so I didn't get to know her well. But I ran into her again in Princeton somewhere around 2004-2005 when she was doing a sabbatical from UVA at the Woodrow Wilson Center and we had lunch, then she brought her kids to our house for a play date. She is a lovely and excellent person and will go on to do further good things in the world. Admittedly, her ability to do great things at scale will be temporarily constrained by having fallen into the maw of the outrage machine, but such is life. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was acting on advice of counsel.