I've been thinking a lot lately about a pair of tragic events that, together, add up to a chilling case of coincidence. On August 25th, Judy Segeren, the Canadian accounts manager for Le Maitre, and wife of Le Maitre's president Adrian Segeren, died when a transport truck hit her SUV. On September 5th, David J. McKennan, a production electrician, programmer, stagehand, and husband of LD Betsy Adams, died in a single-vehicle accident.
There are many parallels here. Both were way too young — Segeren was 38 and McKennan was 46. Both of them worked in partnership with their spouses — McKennan and Adams were partners in the firm Blue Hill Design, which provided lighting design and production services for industrials and special events. And both died in totally unforeseeable circumstances.
There are other, happier parallels, too. In both cases, people in the industry have rallied around Judy and Dave's families, offering support to help them get through what must be unbelievably difficult times. But both deaths are terribly difficult to accept. In each case, my first reaction was, it simply can't be true.
I can't stand people who go around trying to draw morals out of tragic events. But, perhaps because these two events happened just before the second anniversary of 9/11, they've left me brooding a little about the fragile nature of things. We're all subject to the winds of change and nobody knows what's coming around the corner. There's only one defense against these harsh truths: make every minute count. There's another thing you can do: Donations can be made in Judy Segeren's name to the organization Youth for Christ, or in Dave McKennan's name to Community Funds, Inc, for the Dave McKennan Memorial Fund. The address of the latter is Two Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016.