I was talking to my neighbor
He said, “When I get to heaven, if it’s not like this,
I’ll just hop a cloud and I’m coming right back down here
Back to this heavenly bliss.”

“This Place” by Joni Mitchell
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In 2004, I first met Bob Potter when my volunteering began with the Veterans For Peace project envisioned by Steve Sherrill and called “Arlington West,” whereby crosses were set up each Sunday for U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq so as to bring home to the public the terrible cost of war. Back then when I helped with take-down of the crosses each Sunday, I initially knew Bob mostly as Chair of the monthly VFP Chapter 54 meetings which he was excellent at presiding over; always respectful and seamless flow that made the business pleasant, orderly, and productive. In 2007, after hospitalization precluded my heavy lifting at AW, I instead began greeting the public there. Since then, I had the pleasure of working Sundays with Bob Potter at Arlington West. Along with respective chores, always lively dialogue on movies to musicals, books to politics, travels to cuisine, and issues far and near and about everything between. Away from AW, I loved Bob’s marvelous plays, so timelessly creative, whose content always moved and freshness always amazed. It never ceased to amaze me how someone so gifted and extraordinarily accomplished could be so wonderfully ordinary and funny and caring. That someone so remarkable and marvelously talented and vital as Bob Potter should now be gone from us is heartbreaking. My deepest condolences to his family and friends and profound gratitude for having enjoyed the pleasure of his company. With Bob Potter, may we have the courage and the grace and the genius to make this a better place.

Elizabeth Colon
15 July 2010

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