From Flower Power
Our community has dealt with a lot of death during these past
couple months. The untimely passing of Tommy Villanueva hit the
Crested Butte family hard. Once again we witnessed our community
come together around a tragedy. Standing by the grave during the
burial and then again at the celebration of Tommy's life at the
park, I was moved by the open and free sharing of emotions. It
wasn't always this way.
But Tommy was truly a child of that special era of Crested Butte,
the '70's. A time when children were an endangered species and
the whole village helped raise the ones we did have. It seems
as though those days are now sometimes frowned upon because, well,
I'm not sure why maybe because everyone was having too much fun.
Even though those were wild and crazy times of unconventional
parenting, I'm incredibly impressed by the kids that came out
of that era. They have matured into loving and responsible adults.
When their tribe needed them, they dropped everything in their
lives to get on airplanes and into cars and head back to the town
they love, to help bury one of their own.
As I watched adult men cry their hearts out and the ease with
which they comforted one another I was struck by how starkly this
contrasted to the emotionally constipated way death was dealt
with in my childhood. It is a cultural evolution I believe my
generation helped foster. Call it the legacy of the flower children.
Why? Because we love you.
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