There are people who know you, and then there are people who see you.
Paul saw me. During a hard time in my life, when it would have been easy to step back, he didn’t. He just kept showing up. That’s all I need to say about that, and it’s everything.
He was one of the steadiest people I have ever known. That quiet, grounding force that some rare people carry, the kind you don’t fully appreciate until it’s gone. You assume people like Paul will just always be there. You don’t account for a world without them in it.
When we disagreed, he made his point. Clearly, calmly, and always from a place of principle. There was never anything mean in it. He was just steady, the kind of person whose moral compass was so consistently true that even friction with him felt grounding rather than destabilizing.
Losing Paul feels the way the world must have felt losing Anthony Bourdain, that sudden, disorienting realization that one of the genuinely good ones is gone. The kind of person who made every conversation better, who had extraordinary intuition about people and cut straight through to what mattered. If you ever crossed paths with him, even briefly, you knew you were in the presence of someone genuinely authentic.
He had his story, like all of us do. Through all of it, he remained one of the best human beings I have ever known. A person who did the right thing. Always.
The world is smaller without him in it.
Rest well, Paul. You were seen too.
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