Editorial Column: Thank You Michael Sky

Michael Sky died five days ago.

If I write about his death, it will mean he’s really gone. I don’t want to face it.  I couldn’t have published BullWings: Orcas Issues these last two years without him. We were co-workers and I like to think we became friends.

He really believed in community journalism, and occasionally, after he’d undertaken big projects, like the “Great Expectations” featured pages in fall 2009, or the Community Journalism application and tutorial in summer 2010, we’d talk about what we evisioned for our local news site.

He always welcomed the community “voice.”  He believed in and celebrated the power of communication and dialogue.

Along the way, he was the one responsible for fixing minor tweaks and major glitches, like the shutdown from our host provider in March 2010. Michael worked non-stop for days to move the site to his personal domain until we found a reliable new “home” for BullWings: Orcas Issues.

Although he lived in Opal Commons, just up the street from me, we didn’t see each other that much. He worked in his small, self-contained office, choosing simplicity, self-reliance and expression. He just did the work.

Michael was passionate about his profession, working for justice in order to find peace. He loved to write, to think about what he’d written and to make his writing better.

The first time I visited the home he shared with his wife Penny and his daughter Lily was a few months ago; we talked about his relinquishing Orcas Issues so that he could devote the remainder of his life to his personal writing. He’d just published Jubilee Day and was eager to explain both his writing life and the message of the forgiveness of all debts, contained in this novel. What a pleasure it was to listen to him and converse with him!

He said that his passion was moving forward, that he’d been inspired by the video “What If?” I asked if I could visit him again, just to talk and he said, “Of course.”

That never happened. Last Monday I said goodbye to Michael Sky.

In business, we like to say that no one is indispensable, but Michael was indispensable to BullWings. In the quiet, behind-the-scenes way that Michael operated, he was the backbone of our experiment in community journalism. Now he has moved on and so we must also move on.

How can I ever thank him adequately?

I promise you Michael Sky, that I will think peace,  walk on fire, hope for a Jubilee Day and work for Community Journalism.