Here is the full text of the message left by one of the friends of Dennis Crowley.
Name: | Robin Paltis |
Location: | Deer Park NY |
Message: | Pasadena and I lost a good friend when Dennis Crowley died. I thank The Star News for running articles featuring so much about his untiring efforts to bring back the Cycleway and to keep his beloved Pasadena green and sustainable and liveable. But there is so much more. Dennis was an amazingly naturally and multiply talented person. He could pick up any art medium and create a beautiful work in either realistic or abstract styles. He had the hand and he had the eye. He could pick up any musical instrument and make music. He had the ear. He was a natural athlete. He could write well. He had an uncanny knack for public speaking. He understood how things worked and how to make them work. He had a brilliant cerebral sense of humor. Puns were a specialty of his; complex multilayered multipuns spilled out of him poetically. He had the mind. He had a talent for connecting people. He had the heart. He had the ability to grasp and communicate the big picture. He had the insight. He had the vision. Luckily for us, he put all of this to work for us. Ironically, I still think of him as a survivor. Like the time he was stranded in the outback of the eastern Sierra, snowed in for a week longer than planned on a cross country ski expedition. I was sure I'd lost him then. Provisions gone, he dug into a snow cave and lived to tell me about it. And then, there was the time he was diagnosed with a rapidly invasive cancer and his doctors assured us he had a year to live. That first night that we knew, I hated to leave him alone in the hospital with his fears. I was a wreck. When I came back the next morning, he was serene about it. He said he was ready. That was 23 years ago. In the decades we spent as best friends and constant companions he taught me so much. I can't believe he's gone so soon. I'm not ready. Robin Paltis |