Kim Briggs

Picture of the Day for 4/21/2015. I happened to be in the office today when it was announced that head of the office had passed away that very morning. Kim Briggs had been on leave for a year after he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. 

At one time about 10 or so years ago, he also used to be my Mormon bishop in my single's ward. Whenever I would go in for a personal interview with him, we would talk "shop" rather than anything related to religion.  

My favorite memory of Kim is when he dropped by my house for a visit with his counselors. He saw all my books crammed into my bookcases so he asked for a suggestion. I told him my all-time favorite novel was Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. There's one sentence in the book at the end that turns the whole story upside down. It's worth reading the novel (which can be hard to get into- I won't lie) for that one sentence. I didn't tell him about it because I wanted to see if he had the same reaction. He ran up to me in church a couple of months later and exclaimed that the whole book had been worth reading for that one-sentence reveal. Made my whole year when he did that.

Seeing his empty office was especially poignant today.