The Beginning is the End is the Beginning Again...

To crew, lovers, teachers and friends...

On May the 1st, Roger Allen Nailor, my father, drifted peacefully through the veil of Death and into the stories of our memories. His death was relatively sudden: though he was had been battling a heart arythmia in particular and a premature weakening heart in general noone could have foreseen the stroke that called him to the threshold of that Veil. For ten days his body fought the effects of that which tapped his shoulder unexpectedly and was surrounded by a deep chorus of love singing softly and joyfully as he finally drifted away....nine days before his 58th birthday.

I don't know much about the man who was my father; fathers are, as Bryan has said, a dizzying topic at best, so hard to put a precise finger on. It was not my life's destiny to grow up with him but, for however deep a father's influence to our lives, it is always profound. For many years, he lived his fulfilled dream of actively farming in a community in rural Iowa, additionally serving as a vice-president of a local bank. He was a tireless support of compassion, doing everything he could to bring finances to struggling Families of the Earth, serving his church and his faith in openness and inclusion to everyone within his vision. No one was unwelcome to his heart and compassion, according to those who knew him best. Roger would always listen, always provide and ear and encouragement, from the young child, known by name, encouraged and consoled after a local sporting match to the client in his office who didn't feel the vibe of a corporate stranger. To all he gave hands on shoulders, open ears and soft, joyful eyes...

Love and Compassion is like a vibration or deep sound: it travels best and farthest in open space. Many of us know the crowded spaces of constant movement, hustle, and the continual stimulation of contemporary society. Our minds are always moving and moving fast. There is, more than we realize, no room made for quiet and open space where such silence might foster what we have to give to another. Roger was not an actor, an astronaut, an NBA star (though he loved basketball) or a racecar driver. He simply made people, whomever, feel warm and aware of the best of themselves. For miles through the empty space of Iowa. Each one of us should really be so lucky to have this legacy to sing our noticeable character through empty space...and elevate another....much less the hundreds (if not thousands) of those who bow their head and feel his absence today.

If you are on this list, it is because i love you and ask you to pray for those who have lost the presence of this completely human being who, this i know for sure, only worked to give the best of himself. They grieve. I grieve.

Make an empty space.

In love.
Scott James Nailor.



...This letter came in a flash, after three days of visitation to a family that i had left behind. In the last hour of my relationship with these lovely people in Iowa, i was lucky enough to know my father better than i ever had. Poignancy, if not converted by Indulgence into Self-Importance, is a source of movement. All of a sudden, one is more aware of the tools at hand, the beauty of breath and the vicious challenge of manifest, the born legacy of a stalker.

...and so to the projects at hand...