Robert Chafe - Thought #10 - Larry Dohey

Today I am thinking about Larry Dohey. I woke up this morning and checked Facebook as I am wont to do, and saw that Larry passed away suddenly yesterday. Larry was an archivist, but a bit of a celebrity at least within in our community, the creative community in Newfoundland and Labrador. He worked at the archives of the Basilica, the Roman Catholic Diocese for many years, and then at the Rooms provincial archives, and he was an endless resource to so many people in our community on so many fronts, and watching the reaction to his passing this morning on social media is just kind of a testament to the effect that a person can have even in jobs that sometimes quietly go unnoticed such as an archivist. Larry kind of elevated – I'll use that word – elevated the importance and the public impact of a position like that. And yeah, so I'm sad, and I'm reflective, and I'm thinking of Larry, and I'm grateful to have known him, and I'm grateful to have been touched by his brilliance a bit. And I'm thinking about community, and I'm thinking about impact, and I'm thinking about…all kinds of things.