There was another funeral today.

I didn’t go – though I thought long and hard about going. It’s not that he was any less important than anyone else – just that I knew that there would be others there, and that somehow he knew I was thinking about him all this week.

The thing about him is that he made a difference.

I don’t mean to any one person in particular, though I know that was the case with his family, his friends, his fellow soldiers…

I think everyone makes a difference to those who are closest to them.

No – he made a difference to people he didn’t know, had only seen once ever, and would likely never see again. And he did it while standing on the deck of a replica ship in a 17th century living history museum.

He did it by finding that one thing that some small frightened child wasn’t so frightened of.

He did it by joking and laughing.

He did it by tying ‘magic bracelets’ on tiny wrists so those tiny people wouldn’t be intimidated.

He made a difference without ever asking for validation. He made a difference without ever knowing a name.

He did it because that’s what he wanted to do. After a long distinguished career he followed his muse – to graduate school, to a second career, to a world where teaching the difference between starboard and larboard went far beyond etymology.

It was about that spark – that elusive lightbulb over the head that he wanted to see in all those small charges who trooped onto the sanded, well-caulked decks.

It’s what kept him going for a long time.

Hell – it’s what keeps me going.

Fair winds old soldier.

You made a real difference.