01/21/2021
We want to make sure our entire alumni community saw this tribute to Kathie Bowes, beloved Pre-Kindergarten teacher who passed away last week.
Please share your memories of Kathie here or on the GSFS page and look for more ways to honor Kathie via email.
The entire Greene Street Friends School community mourns the loss of Kathie Bowes, our beloved Pre-Kindergarten Teacher who passed away at her home, surrounded by family, earlier this week.
One of Kathie’s many passions that she passed on to her students was a love of poetry. Each year, Kathie’s class celebrated National Poetry Week and hosted a coffeehouse style open mic for faculty, staff, and GSFS friends to share favorite pieces.
This morning we can’t help but think of the following poem by Maya Angelou and just what a great tree Kathie was in our community- always joyful, always encouraging, always kind, always understanding, always curious. Always a passionate teacher and eager learner.
Kathie was also always dedicated to her home here in Germantown. Kathie’s family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Horizons at Greene Street Friends School, the summer academic enrichment program that she volunteered with regularly and bridged her loves for Germantown, Greene Street Friends School, and education. You may do so here: https://greenestreetfriends.org/giving
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.