I would like to take this time to thank Cuesta College staff and faculty especially Toni Soomer, Matthew Green and Peppe Rose for all the support they have shown over the past few weeks.
I have been trying to sit down and put my thoughts together for days now…the only one thing that has been coming back to me is, Matt was my friend. Not writing this was my way of not defining my friend’s passing, that putting it down in black and white would make it real to me and then my friend would be gone, but I guess he will never leave me…he is now a part of me and part of who I am.
Eight years ago when I first started teaching here at Cuesta, I made a presentation to the CalWORKs staff about a class I was teaching. After the meeting, this very tall young man dressed in a suit came up to me and said, “Hey, I’m Matt Aydelott, we need to talk. I’m the CalWORKs Job Developer and I have an idea for a class”. Well, for the next year and a half we ran into each other at meetings and the opening day ceremony…he would always say, “I’ll call you and we’ll have a drink”… finally one day we met crossing campus and I nailed him down to a day and time. If you have never had to nail Matt down to a time or place to meet…a year and a half was about right in Matt time.
From that first meeting – which he was late to – til our last meeting the Friday before his death – which he was late to – Matt and I became colleagues and friends. We had a staff meeting at a bar in town once a week or so… my wife called it networking…it was a standing joke with everyone that knows me that my boss and I would go to Blue once a week and discuss work. Yes, I would introduce Matt as my boss and every time I did it he would roll his eyes at me and tell people, “No, I am not his boss” and then he would go into several minutes of explaining what he did at Cuesta College, which he hated doing because he had to talk about himself and the program. He was more comfortable talking about music and his favorite band…for those of you who did not have the pleasure of hearing him go on and on about U2, well, there are those of us here today that had that experience and would be glad to share that with you, I am sure.
No, Matt was not my boss, he was my friend. And I will miss drinking with my friend…one of the most interesting, irreverent, funny, cool guys I have known.
Yes, Matt will always be my friend.
