One Year Later...

It has been exactly one year today now since our dear friend John Komaru passed on. Life has gone on, but certainly it has been different without him. We still think about him often and from time-to-time his name will come up in conversation.

One of his colleagues yesterday at John's former engineering firm sent out a very nice email. The email simply stated "All – just take a moment today to remember John Komaru. His unfortunate death a year ago tomorrow was a shock to us all. I still think about the good times we had on the 237/880 project and how John brought so much to our team. He was a good friend to us all and a skilled professional." ~ Jack Tone

In another recent conversation, we were talking about our backgrounds. One person mentioned that she is now a chief deputy in her agency but does not have a college degree. She was able to get to where she is because of a unique state program to train people who have no formal engineering education to become engineers. I shared John's story with the group. His undergraduate degree was also not engineering related, but he did graduate work in an engineering field. John persisted to pass the Engineer-in-Training test, which admittedly is probably the harder exam because it covers subjects spanning a wider range. Following this he sat for and passed the professional civil engineers exam. I always greatly admired John for this achievement.

I understand that John was also remembered at the Institute of Transportation Engineers conference that was held last week in Anchorage, Alaska.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we were able to visit John at his resting place. Here are a few photos from our visit.











The following are places where donations can be made in John's memory:

Cal Opportunity Scholarship
http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/home/donate.htm

Friends of Rollo
http://www.friendsofrollo.com/

American Heart Association
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/