Eulogy: Remembering a friend

A Eulogy For Lynne Angland
Delivered by Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
November 29, 2008, Prineville Senior Center

When I reflect back on Lynne’s life, I am inclined to think about fire.

You all know that Lynne was a redhead—and she lived like a redhead, full of energy and strongly held opinions and a feisty and indomitable spirit. A spark, a fire, a flame lived within Lynne, and you felt its heat from the moment that you met her.

Yet Lynn was one of the most level-headed, kind persons I ever met. You could disagree with Lynne. I sometimes did. And she would listen politely and respectfully and then carefully with an accountant’s precision, explain why you were wrong. The consummate professional, the only way you ever knew that your failure to agree with Lynne didn’t sit well was if you looked into those big blue eyes: which would be snapping , popping and alive with intelligence, a willingness to fight for what she believe was right and sheer guts and determination. To stand near Lynn was to stand by the open fire; to stand against Lynne was to feel the increasing heat of the flames.

I loved the fact that Lynne put her passions into play for others. When she launched her in-office daycare, we all thought she was nuts. I was sitting on the board of a nonprofit daycare at the time, and we were struggling to make ends meet with donations and tax-exempt status. I know Lynne was a creative accountant, but even she couldn’t prop up the balance sheet with goodwill alone! Eventually, that experiment proved to be too costly, but Lynne didn’t admit defeat; she just changed directions. Awakened to the problem of affordable daycare faced by many working parents, she set out to build a better system at the local and state level to ensure that this need was met. She didn’t do this because she had some amazing education expertise in this area: she did it because when Lynne saw a problem, she didn’t just leave it to someone else: she had to fix it.

Lynne’s involvement with the Soroptimists and the Senior Center was a godsend. The ladies (and their beleaguered husbands) who run that organization are really amazing. They single-handedly remove from local government and the community the responsibility for providing one of the most important social service any local government has to address. And they do it very well. But they do it better since Lynne came along and began to lend her expertise to examining the bottom-line and suggesting that whatever you are doing today isn’t as important as you are going to end up tomorrow, if you keep doing it. Lynne helped ensured the financial stability of an organization that is not only nice but is absolutely necessary for serving the Crook County senior community. Almost no one who is directed served by the senior center appreciated the importance of her commitment and its critical timing to the senior center’s future success. Certainly, the patrons of the senior center seldom connected Lynne’s involvement with the benefits they daily received. That was fine with Lynne. She was ever the background player. She was one of those people those of us in community leadership value most: the kind of person you turn to when a job needs doing, needs doing well and you don’t necessarily need the person doing it to grandstand and hog the limelight while they fix the problem. Lynne was made for that role, and she played it very well.

There are only three reasons why the county’s Natural Resource Planning Committee has survived. The passion of Sarah Thomas, a friend of Lynne’s whom we mourned earlier this year, was one of them; the leg work of Mike Lunn, who carries on alone, was another; and the leadership of Lynne Angland was the third. For those who don’t know about this committee, it is rather unique in Oregon’s local government structure. It is a group of people, NOT like-minded, who depend upon and care about the natural world in Crook County. It is comprised of farmers and ranchers, timber interests, local businesses, community leaders, agency personnel, environmentalists and other diverse groups. They gather once a month to discuss subjects like how to protect watersheds and how to promote forest health and how to graze cattle without damaging the land and how to protect frogs and wolves and fish and such. Lynne presided over this sometimes fractious group with good humor, with passion and with deep and abiding interest in all they talked about. What this group does is far outside the realm of cold numbers lined up in neat columns, but Lynne wasn’t the kind of person whose life and whose broad interests were ever going to be confined or defined by a ledger sheet.

There is little consolation to be taken in Lynn’s premature departure. Her absence leaves a hole too big too fill. Her family, whom she loved deeply, will miss her most, but her friends will miss and mourn her for days, weeks, months and years to come. The only silver lining to be found in this tragedy is that when Lynn left us, on her way to attend a state childcare commission meeting, she was on her way to do something bigger than herself, more important than just her community and exemplary of her passions and commitments to making her world a better place to be. Her flame flickered bright to the very end, and I have a hunch, that’s the way Lynne would have wanted to exit the world.

Let me close with poem loosely borrowed by Edna St. Vincent Millay. When I heard about Lynne’s passing, I immediate thought of this, and it gave me a little comfort, because I think it very succinctly sums up the Lynne Angland I knew, admired and called my friend:

My candle burned at both ends,
It did not last the night.
But oh my loved ones and my friends,
It gave such lovely light.