Fireworks and a lost friend

I thought I saw spiders and peonies falling from the sky last night, and according to Slate's guide to identifying fireworks, I was right: different varieties of the rockets' red glare are properly called spiders, peonies, fish, willows, chrysanthemums.

We joined 11,000 people gathered on a hillside at the Blossom Music Center to hear the Cleveland Symphony play Gershwin and Bernstein and Ives and Sousa (Stars and Stripes Forever, of course) and Duke Ellington and Scott Joplin and, for a finale, The 1812 Overture accompanied by cannons. We heard at least a dozen different languages being spoken and saw people of every (star and) stripe--women with scarf-covered heads or flesh-baring sundresses, young boys in skullcaps or glowsticks, people of all ages wearing every possible variety of red-white-and-blue attire--but when the fireworks started, every head turned toward the sky and every face smiled.

My colleague Mike would have liked that moment. He was a champion smiler who often induced smiles in others, counseling distraught students through their angst and moving them closer to happiness and peace, and he never stopped working to promote greater acceptance of diversity on campus. He would have loved to see such a variety of people coming together on a lovely July evening to celebrate freedom.

But he died in a motorcycle accident Saturday, leaving behind a wife and child and a grieving campus. Tomorrow at the memorial service we will trade fireworks for tears, but last night the fireworks made me think of Mike Harding and appreciate what he tried to accomplish:

All those people.

All those colors.

All those smiles.