Chas Brack

Jasmine: [This is Jasmine Timmester interviewing Chas Brack on September 24th, 2021]. Chas, if you could tell me about your life before coming to Antioch, you can go into as much detail as you want, and yeah, maybe about like, how you chose Antioch, things like that?

Chas: I grew up on the south side of Chicago. And, you know, my mom, my dad, my brother, actually an older sister who lived next door, you know I was that kid 00:00:30who had a pretty full and robust childhood.I rode bikes, I played sports, like football, and baseball, and all that kind of stuff on the street or in the alley with my friends or my cousins. And I also played by myself, you know, just alone at the dining room or kitchen table, you know, coloring or drawing, you know, 00:01:00making things with my hands. I loved dolls, you know, just things that were artistic and beautiful. And I felt pretty different at a fairly early age, and yeah, the--things started turning around for me when it was real clear to me 00:01:30that I liked boys. And that happened pretty early on, you know, I would say that awareness was probably from around 12 or so. And, when things really started changing was in eighth grade, where I got really badly bullied, and got beat up by a bully. And just, it really changed my life because only months before that, 00:02:00my mom died, and I happened to be with my mom when she died, and my father was there as well. And so, you know, it was a pretty traumatic experience for, you know, this young kid and then, you know feeling so terribly vulnerable, that when I got beat up I just really didn't have anything else to give. You know, it 00:02:30was just like I was just done. And I didn't go back to that school. So I was just resolute, I was like, "I'm not going back." And I didn't. So, luckily I had really good grades at that point, you know, I was really a very scholastic kid, I used to get those certificates of merit at the school assembly every year. And 00:03:00so, I just would not return, but I was lucky enough to test out of grammar school, so I, you know, I did get my grade-school diploma. But I was too afraid to go to any other schools in my district, cause I knew I was just going to get eaten alive, because I was that kid, you know? And so, I kind of had to hobble together different classes in different schools, like I went to a Catholic school, I went to this school for people who had aged out of the system, so that 00:03:30they could come back and get their high school diploma, you know, so I hobbled together the credits to get back into high school. But I was lucky enough to find a high school called the Chicago Public High School for Metropolitan Studies. 250 kids, and, you know, that's when I started, you know, it was about 00:04:00that many. And it probably wasn't many more by the time I graduated, but it was a really magnet school, and based on the theory that it's a school without walls, so we used the entire city to do learning. And for instance, if you had a science class, you could be at the Museum of Science and Industry; sports 00:04:30classes might be at the local bowling alley, or wherever, you know, wherever the subject was, you would go to that place where that was happening and study. So, it was a really rich experience, but the best thing about it was that because it was a magnet school, I got to--I was introduced to diversity and inclusion very 00:05:00early in my life. It was just a lot of fun and, you know, on the first day of school, I met a man named Richard Green, Richard Thornton Green III, to be exact, and God rest his soul, he passed away in the '90s from complications due to AIDs. But that first day, we kind of were magnets, and we were inseparable, until I left for college. It was amazing, so Richard was the first, but then 00:05:30there was Eric, and then there was Daryl, and you know, there was a gaggle of us, you know? In this small school there was probably about ten of us, you know, so we were a solid, about 10 percent of the population, and we just had the best time. I mean, I just felt like Richard rescued me from obscurity and then all 00:06:00these other people came and we created community there. And, you know, we would go out to dinner, and movies, and we just-- high school was an exhilarating and exuberant time for me. But there were still some, you know, some struggles, I, um-- My father died in 1975, so his last act as a dad was to get me into that 00:06:30school, you know, and we didn't really get along, I thought it was because he might've been homophobic, but I don't think that anymore. I think it's because he was afraid for me, in that, you know, I was this really soft and sensitive kid, you know, even though I am a man of stature, my spirit was just like, you know, it was very Fernando, you know--Ferdinand, I should say. So, yeah, I ended up not graduating from Metro, I don't actually have a high school diploma, 00:07:00because there was so much going on, like, you know, I was really surprised in hindsight that no one in that school took the time to say, "Look, you've had a really tough time; you've lost your mother and your father in the last five years"--or actually they were 4 years apart. "How can we support you? How can we 00:07:30make this a successful and good experience for you?" And even though I was having a lot of fun, it was an escape from what was happening in my family that--you know, in 1971, in January my mother died, by August my father was remarried, we had a whole new family that, you know, came to live with us. And then in 1975 my father died and then I went into that school. No one at that 00:08:00school said anything about the trajectory of what had been happening to me, and I think that was a gross failure on their part. But the school did do for me what I think it needed to do for me at the time, which was to provide safety. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I had gone to like, a 00:08:30district school, which was notorious for being a rough place to be. So you know, although I think they failed me I'm still grateful for that experience. And I met someone there, this woman Skylar, who was an Antioch student. She went away, and came back and was telling us about this great, you know, utopian place 00:09:00[laughs] called Antioch, and I remember coming here for Prospective Week. And I was mesmerized, you know, and the fact that Antioch had a Gay Center? I was like, Yeah I'm doing this. So that's basically the story of how I came to Antioch.

Jasmine: Thank you so much. [Asks the next question: Antioch has a reputation 00:09:30for having one of the most radically progressive campus cultures in the country. Do you agree with this reputation, and what was it like arriving as a new student?]

Chas: Yes, I do think that Antioch has a really strong, radical spirit here, and it was one of the things that attracted me to the school. Does it mean that things didn't happen here when I was here, when I came in 1978? No, but 00:10:00generally--the reason I came here was because I wanted to feel safe at school, and that sense of safety was a radical idea for me. You know, for someone who didn't feel safe in many spaces, this was a place that I really felt like I could breathe. But somewhere like in the--probably '81 or '82, things started 00:10:30really getting very ugly on campus. I remember, you know, there was racial strife, there was gay bashing and bullying, and there was anti-woman hate speech being--it was just a really very interesting time. So these are like, you know, 00:11:00the times at the beginning of the Reagan administration. And I think, you know, Antioch is a microcosm of the world, and so we got some of it too. But the thing that was really great about being at Antioch is that the students responded to 00:11:30that, you know, to that bias and that bigotry, and I remember we called it the Winter of Discontent, and I can't ever remember which exact winter it was, but that winter quarter was very rough. There was a large demonstration from the Gay Center, which I was one of the coordinators of, Third World Alliance and the Women's Center. Now these three groups didn't gel with each other very much. That winter, I remember sitting in a meeting in Svaha [a lounge in the Student Union] with the Gay Center, the Women's Center, and Third World Alliance, and that's why it's like, 00:12:00you know-- that's when I got introduced to the idea of intersectionality. And that you can occupy more than one space at a time, and that coalition building 00:12:30was a really important part of social change and structure. So those two groups, you know, started talking, and you know, from that, you know, there were more women's studies courses, there was more African-American studies or Black studies courses, you know-- the Gay Center did a big event the following spring 00:13:00that, you know, invited the whole community. So it really was a point where, you know, community meetings were robust and exciting, and it was a hard time, but at the same time, it really kind of set the stage for where I would go in my future, just being able to witness these really young people just like, demanding that the school that they go to and, you know, pay money to attend, make some changes, and make some institutional changes to support the work that 00:13:30they were doing, you know, in the dorms and in the cafeteria, and all over campus. So, I was just like, [laughing] this is exciting, you know. Yes, I do believe that it has that flavor, and I think that people cherish that about 00:14:00Antioch. Make sense?

Jasmine: Yeah that is really interesting to hear, and uh, also, that these courses were being implemented, you know, through student demands and, uh, you 00:14:30know, just--and that was such a national trend in the '60s and '70s as well, and you know, even before that, with the Black Panthers demanding African American studies, and other groups... Um, you mentioned that community meeting was like, really robust and interesting. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about like, community meeting, like how it was structured, you know, what was discussed usually, or anything like that maybe?

Chas: Yeah, community meetings were in the caf', which was in the [Student] Union building, which I think is now abandoned. But I remember, there was one kind of ad hoc meeting that took place instead of the Wednesday Night Dance--because we had Wednesday and Saturday night dances--a group of lesbians basically just kind of commandeered the stereo, and took the speaker wire and 00:15:30wrapped it around their hands like, you know, our colleagues are in pain, we're in pain, and it's not dancing right now, you know, so we came marching past because there was a demonstration where we were marching through the dorms, you know, the young students of color, in response to the housing department putting 00:16:00out a questionnaire in the dorms--which they found may or may not have actually been true, that it was the housing department that slipped these pieces of paper under the doors asking if you wanted to be housed in the same dorm or the same room with an international student from the Arab countries. We're going like, "What the--" But, so we're marching through the dorms, we come by the cafeteria 00:16:30and everyone, the lights are on in the cafeteria, the stereo is down, and people are sitting in a circle talking about racism, sexism, and homophobia. You know, because these women just basically [chuckles] shut it down. But the other community meetings that, you know, were, I think it was ComCil [Community Council] at the time, you know, it was a basic structure of any other community meetings except, you know, they had it in the cafeteria and it was more like a 00:17:00speakout, you know, where people really demanded that, officials from the school come and talk to the student body about, you know, some of the things that were going on on campus, you know. Structurally, I don't know what was happening behind the scenes because I wasn't on ComCil or anything like that at the time. But just, you know, as a participant, you know, it was pretty-- interesting to 00:17:30see the school officials come into the cafeteria and meet us on our territory, and as I remember, at one point, a bunch of seniors also occupied Main Building, and there was just a whole moratorium on, you know, on the rac[ism], sex[ism], homophobia, etc., where basically the school just shut down for a minute, you know, I think it was about a week or so where it was like no classes or anything because people were adamant about making change around, you know, people who are on the outside of the franchise feeling safe and secure.

Jasmine: Thank you so much for sharing about that, I think that this is a lot of Antioch history that I'm sure not even current students know about as--you know, 00:18:30I think there's some protests and strikes that we're aware of from the history, but I think that, you know, this demonstrates that there's so much more to that that we really never hear about, for the most part. Jumping into the second question, how do you think this culture affected you during your time attending the college, and your life beyond? So, you know, maybe how that influenced your 00:19:00personality-- and also, did it affect your understanding of your own gender and sexuality, during your time at Antioch or beyond?

Chas: Okay, this is a super good question [laughs], because, yeah, I think those events and the community and culture here really kind of concretized my 00:19:30trajectory. So, when I left Antioch, I went to New York. But I'm just going to slip a little bit of extra in here. When I came to Antioch and met all these queer students from around the country--and back then, we were all just gay and lesbian, you know, "lesbian" had actually just become one of the more-- interesting topics, you know, it was like, I think, around the time when women 00:20:00were like, "Hey, you know, we're not being represented under this 'gay' umbrella." And so, you know, that's why we had the Women's Center as well. But seeing what was happening here and being a part of it and just feeling like it 00:20:30was--this activism was the answer to the things that had been hurting me, a--you know, in my family, in my grade school, in my middle school, you know, in my 00:21:00high school... So, it really made sense for me to continue the work that I started doing here, at Antioch, and the learning that I started doing here, at Antioch. So, when I did get here, I wanted to see more of the gay community, and so, I heard that San Francisco was a gay Mecca, and then I took my first co-op job there. Sadly, it was in San Francisco in the gay community where I first encountered interpersonal racism. So, you know, I was pretty insulated from 00:21:30racism because I lived in an all-Black neighborhood, it just wasn't an issue. And then I went to this, you know, groovy [?] alternative school, so it wasn't an issue. You know, there had been some institutional racism that even I experienced from cops as a young kid, you know, nine years old being stopped by the cops because they thought we looked like suspects. But I had never 00:22:00encountered, you know, someone just flat-footed, you know, face to face, you know, discriminating against me because of my race. And that's what happened in the gay bars and community in San Francisco. You know, I was there on co-op and 19 years old, and wide-eyed and thinking, this is going to be Mecca and it's going to be great. Not so much. You know, to be carded at the door, you know, 00:22:30for ID when people who looked younger than me would just breeze by. Now, when I was in San Francisco, I was the same size I am now, you know, I looked like a full grown man, but no, you know, these young guys would come breezing by and they would just get, you know, let in. And if we did get in, you know, me and some of the friends I met, you know, you could stand at the bar and the 00:23:00bartender would come to you and look you in the face and then move on to the next customer. I was devastated, I didn't know what to think, so, you know, I kind of turned tail and came back to campus. So in '83 when I left, I went to New York City, and I was starting to feel some of that same kind of energy that 00:23:30I felt in San Francisco on Christopher Street. So I was really dismayed, and I'm looking through the Village Voice or I think it might have been something like HX Magazine, I can't remember the magazine, but I found a group called Black and White Men Together, which was an anti-racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism organization that was striving for equality and inclusion and diversity. And I 00:24:00started going to those meetings. Every Friday, we had consciousness-raising groups, fundraising, activities, game nights, seders-- I mean, it was like Antioch, except with just gay men. And I was like, Wait a minute, I didn't know that other gay men outside of Antioch had this kind of, you know, eclectic feel and, you know, welcoming--So yeah, it was just, it was a super 00:24:30important time in my life after leaving Antioch and then finding a community that was like Antioch but outside, you know, which I now know is just left activism, and you know... And so, but through that group and my work with that 00:25:00group, that parlayed me into a position at the New York City Commission on Human Rights, in the Lesbian and Gay Discrimination Documentation Project, where I stayed for nine years. It was also the AIDS discrimination division. So, you know, this place was really the springboard for me, you know, doing the work that I wanted to do in the arena that I wanted to do it in and so, you know, I'm really grateful for that.

Jasmine: That's great, and thank you so much for talking about your co-op 00:25:30because I don't think--I think I could make it a bit more explicit that, you know, when talking about Antioch I also want to include those co-op experiences as well. Um, let's see. I think I'll go ahead, then I'll actually jump over to question #4, and ask, "Are there any ways in which you think your life would be 00:26:00different had you gone to a more typical liberal arts college?" Assuming that that would be a possibility.

Chas: [Laughs] If I'd gone to another college, I don't know. I can't even imagine, it's hard to think about that, just because, you know, when you feel othered, you feel pretty early, you know? And I really don't have any kind of 00:26:30way to make sense or even kind of fantasize or speculate what it would be like if I had not come to Antioch. I had been so damaged by traditional schools that I--I don't know, I think that I might not have gone to school, you know. I 00:27:00applied for a few different schools, I think I applied for Reed [College], things that seemed like the high school that I went to. But you know, that's an interesting question, I really can't even answer that because Antioch has been such a huge part of the fiber of who I've become, you know? I have three god kids and all of their parents were Antioch students. And some were Antioch 00:27:30teachers and presidents! [Chuckles]

Jasmine: Well, that's great, a great answer. Let's see. Okay so, um, we'll, go ahead and go to [question] number three. "Since graduation, have you built a family and/or career, and if so, do you relate these aspects of your life to your time at Antioch in any ways?"And I think it's pretty obvious with, as you were saying that experience was a springboard for your career. But, you know, maybe if there's more detail you want to add or talk about, you know, your family--

Chas: Okay, so I don't have like a nuclear family structure, but I do have, you 00:28:00know, family and friends. Or my family of design, I should say. But, yeah, so you know, my job at the New York City Commission on Human Rights was in--you know, I basically was able to do what I started out to do, so under Bob Devine, 00:28:30the now late Bob Devine, who was my professor and my advisor, he wetted my appetite for documentary arts, and I was lucky enough to get a job doing documentaries [laughs] it was like, Wait a minute, I'm getting a job with the skills that I learned at school? That's impossible! So, at the Commission on 00:29:00Human Rights, I was the associate video producer, for the time I was there we produced one feature length documentary called, The Second Epidemic, about AIDS, but The Second Epidemic was about fear, misinformation and discrimination. And, 00:29:30you know, it was basically, you know, taking stories from four people who had filed complaints with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, who had been discriminated against because of their handicap or disability, namely HIV, AIDS. So, after the Commission on Human Rights, I went to the Gay Men's Health Crisis. 00:30:00I don't know if you know a lot about the Gay Men's Health Crisis but it was probably the first and premier AIDS social service organization in the country, and I landed a job there as one of the line producers, or as one of the producers on the Living With AIDS show, which was a weekly television magazine dedicated to doing AIDS education to people who were infected by HIV, AIDS or 00:30:30affected by HIV, AIDS. Two years into that, I became the coordinator of that unit. So effectively, I was the producer and director of that television show. Amazing experience and an opportunity to be able to do exactly what I set out doing here at Antioch, was to make, you know, content about social change, 00:31:00right. And years later, I worked at Third World Newsreel and one of the founders of Third World Newsreel was an Antioch student, her name is JT Takagi and you know, helped them get their Queer Essentials Collection up and running. So, you know, Antioch is in everything [laughs] I do, you know. I remember one of my colleagues, Dr. Alisa Lebow, she wasn't a doctor then, she is now, so, you know, 00:31:30I just want to give her her props, she would have me on an Antioch budget, she was like, "You can only talk about Antioch one time a day!" [laughs].

Jasmine: That's great. Yeah, I guess, do you want to talk about, you know, I think, being one of the coordinators of--was it Gay Club or Gay--? Gay Center. I 00:32:00guess it might be good, you know, if there's anything else you'd like to share about Gay Center and you know, maybe how it impacted you, but maybe also how you saw it impact other students as well, you know, if you saw students come--I'm sure like being a coordinator, being an upperclassmen at that point, you saw some younger students come in and maybe, you know, unlike--you had that 00:32:30excellent high school experience, maybe these, you know, incoming freshmen and sophomores--I should say first-years, second-years--maybe they didn't quite have that same experience and maybe this was the first time being in that, a space like that. So I don't know if you have any experiences like that.

Chas: Well, and it was--you know, we did have--you know, because I did it several different times, you know, for several different quarters, coordinate 00:33:00the Gay Center and we had social activities, we'd have educational activities like, you know, one spring we did something called-- I think we called it Multicultural Desserts on--no, oh gosh, what was it called? It was some convoluted name that was really ridiculous and fantastic. I can't think of the 00:33:30name of it, but it was something like, you know, Desserts on Multicultural Plates or something like that, so it was a big event on campus. There were three different things going on that day, on Multicultural Day, and one of them was a poetry reading, and an art opening, a gallery opening, in the basement of Birch. 00:34:00So it was transformed into a gallery, there was an installation, there was paintings, photographs, you know, of different scenarios on campus. Beautiful. And on the outside of that space, on the patio, was a poetry reading. Which was--I remember that day so vividly because it was in the spring and, you know, 00:34:30some of the blossoms were falling off the trees as people were reading poetry. It was like, very, like, I don't know, it looked like something out of a noir film or something, it was really very dramatic. And then we ended it, the day, with a fashion show at the Gay Center--because we had a house that was right 00:35:00across the street from Morgan House, or right across the street from Norman House. So basically, people could come and see this fashion show and have a really rich dessert, because one of the members of the Gay Center was a very prolific baker, John Reid, who had studied in France and he made all these 00:35:30really rich like, alcohol-laced desserts. And we set it up like a little cafe, it had like live sculpture, film, you know, backdrops on the walls, you know, and people just having a good time in the space with these desserts, we made a ton of money. And so I think that really impressed probably some of the newer folks, you know, that people could pull it together like this, and that so much of the campus came to either one or two of the events. The last thing on that 00:36:00day was just a dance, which we called the Black Party. [Laughs] We were so precocious it was ridiculous, but it was like a real blow-out, it was really really fun, we took these speakers that were designed to fill up the cafeteria and put them in this little basement. So it was pretty wild, you know, it was--those three events on that day, but that was like, you know, a very big 00:36:30event, buty, you know, throughout the year and, you know, throughout the quarters it was about, you know, nurturing new folks to make sure they were safe and had a place to go. And I guess, if anything, it was probably the closest thing you could get to a fraternity or a sorority, where people really tried to pull up the younger people who were coming behind them. There's a woman who is 00:37:00living in San Francisco who has not even--she was from Dayton, but she's living in San Francisco now--she wasn't even a student here, but we attracted people from all over the area and we welcomed people from the community, the townies, from different areas around the campus to, just welcome them and, you know, make sure that they had a safe space, you know, I'm still in touch with this woman 00:37:30who is now married and has two kids, is a fancy lawyer. But she remembered that, you know, that someone was kind to her, and created a space for her, you know. There was another man, who also wasn't an Antioch student, you know, same kind of thing, you know, the Gay Center was a place for people to come and feel safe. And of course the safety was not just in that building, but it was, you know, 00:38:00basically because, if you have an emblem that represents something and that representation was throughout the campus and throughout the year.

Jasmine: That's wonderful. I'll go ahead and ask the last question, then. "Is 00:38:30there any message that you would give to the current and future students of Antioch if you could, and any message for the current and future LGBTQ+ youth in general?" If you have any message.

Chas: Yeah, I mean I don't want to particularly wax philosophical just because I think that, you know-- Something interesting has happened in the community. How 00:39:00do I put this delicately? Fuck that, I've never been known to be delicate [laughs]. You know, the community has grown up and has grown out. And so, you know, if--I almost call it like a conceptual, or a community diaspora. You know, so the community is not centralized anymore. And I think that, you know, the 00:39:30younger people are going to be the people who actually save our community. Because, you know, when I was growing up, all the ills from the outside world, you know, LGBTQ folks in the community being a microcosm of the world, you know, I saw a lot of those ills from, those societal ills, in the gay community, you 00:40:00know, back in the late '70s, early '80s, some into the '90s, that were just ugly parts of America and the world. And the only thing that separated the community from the rest of that was the fact that they, you know, were queer. But this generation of folks coming up now, their understanding of inclusion and diversity and intersectionality, and expansiveness, being nimble of mind and 00:40:30body and spirit, I find it fascinating. Like, you know, I think it's these younger folks that are actually going to save the community and, you know, kind of figure out a way to make it whole again, because I experienced the LGBTQI community as being very fractured. But as I'm watching people like you [Jasmine] 00:41:00and some other folks that I have watched over the years, especially during my work--I did a film about a 15-year-old Black lesbian who was killed in a hate crime in north New Jersey. It's called Dreams Deferred: the Sakia Gunn Film Project. And, so I got to meet a lot of folks during that time--and that was my dream, was to do something, you know, about life as a Black gay person, and 00:41:30unfortunately, it happened around the death of Sakia but I don't want to reduce her life to the time of her death, or the experience of Black gay folks as woeful and tragic. But I met so many young people who were so incredibly smart, and just impressive and generous in their thought, and just, could turn on a 00:42:00dime and had so much quickness and wit. I learned so much about myself, as you know, as a Black gay man who had come through some really, very-- robust is not even a good adjective for it, it was a miraculous time, you know, being in New 00:42:30York, rubbing elbows with people who are starting organizations in like other countries, and Gay Men of African Descent, where the Black gay community was really kind of burgeoning, you know, and so it was a really good time then. When I started doing that film and meeting so many young folks, I just, I got a very different view of all the possibilities that can happen in what truly is a 00:43:00microcosm, you know, because our community comes from all parts of the world, from all walks of life. And to see them navigating that and negotiating that in a way that, you know, was aimed to progress the community... Yeah, I don't think 00:43:30there's nothing that I can say that's going to, you know, change their trajectory except, you know, Go for it. We did what we did, so that you all can do what you're doing now. You know, we kicked the ball down the street as far as we could, and that was good. The work that we did was good, you know, it laid 00:44:00the groundwork, but the stuff that I see folks doing now, younger folks doing now, it's just miraculous to me. So, bravo to y'all.

Jasmine: That's amazing. And I really, really, what you said like, I really--made me realize, I was like Yeah, you know, there really is so much overlap, I think that nowadays it's just, if you meet someone who is, you know, queer, then they're very likely going to be a leftist, maybe politically active, 00:44:30maybe anti-racist, maybe, you know, a feminist, you know, there's so much [more] overlap and intersectionality today. And that is something I didn't really think about, but you saying that, I'm like, That is absolutely the truth.

Chas: And one of the biggest movements right now is Black Lives Matter, at the helm of that is some queer women [laughs] so it's good stuff.

Jasmine: Absolutely. Yeah, so that is all of my questions here, feel free to, if you have anything else in mind, of like, "Oh, I kind of wish I covered that," then feel free to--One thing? Okay.

Chas: So, you know, I just would be remiss if I didn't talk about HIV and AIDS, 00:45:30and the way that it affects, you know, especially the alumni community at Antioch, you know. So, just to name some folks, like Eric Gupton, [Lawrence Joseph] Steiger, Robert Ford, Tim-- I can't think of Tim's last name, but I can try to get that for you. But of all the people that we lost during the apex of the AIDS 00:46:00epidemic, you know, [Audio distortion] to have them, Robert Stern, not be here-- yeah, it's beyond sad, it's beyond unfair, you know, and I've been thinking a lot about them in this time during this current pandemic of covid. Those men 00:46:30would've loved to be here, to have these old man problems that I suffer from, you know, as a 61-year-old man. You know, and I just, I think about those lives lost, you know, and how important Angel, and Ricardo, there are so many, you 00:47:00know, whose names just evade me right now, but it just would be, you know, egregious for me to not take a moment and talk about how it affected, you know, our community at the loss of these really incredibly talented people, you know, and just wonderful human beings.