(Return to Visalia Friends Meeting Home Page) A remembrance of Bard By Melissa Howard I did not become aware of the true magnitude of Bard's work until I was an adult and happened to find a book with a chapter about his work in Teviston at our local library. I had the good fortune, though, to grow up knowing the magnitude of his kindness as a man. We moved to Visalia and started going to Quaker meeting when I was nine years old. At Quaker meeting I found shining examples in Bard, Bill, Bob, and Walt that there were trustworthy, kind, honorable, admirable men in this world. I mention them all because it will in one sense be too late at any future memorials. Bard, with his Santa Claus beard, red beret, and twinkle in his eye went out of his way to be kind to me and it touched me deeply. At our Quaker camping trip to Montanyo de Oro when I was about 11, Bard took a group of us children on a little hike. He joyfully explained what all the plants were and then stopped and carved a bamboo flute for me and showed me how to play it. I was so shy in those days I could hardly speak, but I was stunned to my core that someone would do that for me. A simple act, perhaps, but it took time and effort there in the hot sun on the mountain side. Watching Bard whittle I told myself that I would save that flute for the rest of my life and that I would never forget his kindness to me that day. From that day to this that flute has been prominently displayed on my bookshelves and every time I look at it I remember Bard and it brings me joy. I don't know if it was before the Montanyo de Oro camping trip or after, but it was around the same time that I was stunned again when Bard and Olga called our house one weekend morning and invited me to go bird watching with them. I was painfully shy and usually felt utterly invisible, the fact that they had even thought of me was beyond my comprehension. Me? They wanted to go bird watching with me? I said I would go, but my heart was pounding with fear. Did they really want someone to join them for the whole day who didn't know how to make conversation? Maybe they had made a mistake and would discover it halfway up the mountain. I was the one who was mistaken. By the time we were halfway up the mountain Bard and Olga had asked me so many questions and told me so many things about birds and nature and life I forgot that I was shy. I wanted to see the birds the way they saw them with excitement and wonder. I wanted to learn all they had to teach. I saw a new world through their binoculars that day. We hunted for pretty pebbles in a creek and I knew I would save them the rest of my life the same way I did the flute. We laughed over our picnic lunch and I felt so warm and peaceful inside I never wanted that day to end. Thank you Bard, thank you Olga, for all the large and small acts of kindness you have done. They won't be forgotten.