John van der Zee

In the early 1970's, I was working on a book about Canyon, then regarded as a somewhat disreputable community populated by people named Chime or Redwood. While doing research at the St. Mary's Library, I started talking with Brother Dennis, who impressed me immediately as someone both unusually conversant with local history, and uncommonly generous about sharing what he knew with others. This intellectual generosity, I came to realize, was part of a larger tolerance toward people in general, accepting them as what they are while at the same time trying to address and encourage what Abraham Lincoln termed "the better angels of our nature". His was a working faith, applied to the everyday world, radiant with sharing and intelligence, and excluding nobody.

Thank you, Brother Dennis. I can't pay you back, but I'll try to pass it on.

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