Gerald Folkerts

Good bye Gerald. We miss you. For 51 shining years, you have made this world a better place - with your art, with your ethics and with your leadership.

The images you were able to put on canvass speak to us still - the people and their stories. In my office hangs a painting, created by you, for a children's story. There is child in a bed floating on a huge lake. In my imagination it is Lake Winnipeg, but it could be any large lake - so big that you can not see the shore. She is floating and dreaming, and though we can't see her expression clearly, we know she is full of the wonder of the moment.

It is but one image - of the many, many you have treated us to. Through Dana and the Gravel Road blog (http://gravelroadjourney.blogspot.com/, we have got to know you even better. And through the service, yesterday, we learned still more. You had a talent for taking the path less travelled, and for seeing details most of us did not see. Good bye - we miss you.