Seminal Story of Greg Kahn

Benjamin, of the many stories that shape our memories of your wonderful father, none seems to better define his unflinching impulse to make the world a brighter, warmer place than the story he told me of his birth.

You see, your father was born on the date of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Because his mother, Ronnetta, had been busy that day, she was not yet up-to-date on the latest news when she awoke the following morning.

Once the nurses saw that she had awakened, they gently brought her first-born child to her embrace, opened the curtains to reveal a beautiful Spring day, turned on the TV and left.

Some minutes later, after the news unfolded from Memphis, and Detroit, and Los Angeles, a nurse returned and saw that she was weeping heavily, looking down into the face of her son.

They all thought she was going through some post-partum depression, but the truth was that she felt powerless and ashamed: Over and over, she kept apologizing to your Dad for bringing him into a world capable of such inhumanity and suffering.

Few of us have birth stories so inextricably linked to so much malevolent evil. In the face of this legacy, your father made a conscious commitment to be a good man, to positively and genuinely engage those who were different from him, to ruthlessly identify and drive into the outer darkness all those who would oppress their neighbors, and to revel in the integrity and even the smallest achievements of his family and friends.

Put simply, he was a light that shone to the ends of the Earth, and we — dispersed throughout the world — will all carry his flame in our hearts forever for one and only one purpose…

So that if you or your family ever need anything, at any time or any place, this flame will ALWAYS be available to you, waiting for the chance to respond to your request.

With warmest love for you, your mother and all your family,
Uncle Gilbert Saldivar