I never had the honor of meeting Laura Dickinson, but I’ve talked with many people who did, and I feel it’s important, this week and always, to remember who she was. By all accounts, she was the kind of young adult in whom parents take great pride and joy, a real friend to many people, a classmate beloved by her peers. She was someone who, at college, found a healthy, productive balance between her academic work and other rewarding, postiive activities.
Laura Dickinson was a fine, outstanding person. We know so much about her because of the terrible way her life ended, and the terrible way supposedly responsible university officials lied about her death not being a probable homicide. But now is is a time to recall who she was, rather than letting the press and the defense team create misleading views of her.
She was a young woman from Hastings, Michigan, someone who by all accounts was loved and cherished by countless people. She had a great smile, and a warm heart. She cared about the weak and the hungry, for AIDS orphans in Africa, for her friends and family. She was a vegetarian and a health advocate, and I’ve seen some some wonderful nature photography of hers; she had an eye for beauty and a creative mind. She worked in her father’s coffee shop in Hastings, which he built up into a really happening place at the center of that small community, and she also worked in other nearby shops.
She was a serious student, who had goals and ambitions and dreams, and she was an athlete who found comfort in the friendship of her fellow rowers, and no doubt she found
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