In Memoriam:

Jameson Bond, d. June 1, 2007

In this post, I want to say adieu to our family's friend, Jameson Bond, known as Jamie to all who loved him.

In the 1940's, two young men met at the University of Toronto as part of a small gathering of the neophyte Baha'i club. This meeting would establish a friendship that carried them all of their lives. They were Jamie Bond and my father.

I have just phoned my father to tell him that Jamie has gone to the next world. He passed away in the company of his beloved wife, Gale; in my book, Partners in Spirit, Jamie closed the penultimate chapter with his loving homage to his wife.

When I was teaching at Maxwell, from time to time, Jamie and Gale and I would meet, whether at a Baha'i event or at the school. He would share his memories of my young father (quite a man for the ladies, he would say, although my dad remembers being painfully shy). He and Gale became mentors to me when I was a teenager and we all lived in the Ottawa Valley.

He and his wife were Knights of Baha'u'llah for the Arctic, and I had the pleasure of serving with Gale on a National committee of the Baha'is when I was a teenager. She was patient and kind.

I will remember Jamie and Gale in my prayers. The pictures are of Jamie and Gale with our friend, Hunter, and of Jamie with Reggie Newkirk, both taken during the Maxwell years.

Godspeed, Jamie,

Love, Heather