Tribute to John Pickering

I want to talk to you about the lessons that so many of us have learned from John, and the qualities that made him so memorable and so extraordinary. The first was his unerring ability to know what was right. Now, many of us want to do right, but John always knew what the right thing was. Despite growing up in a time and place where women and people of color were not valued, where the homeless, the despised, the poor, and the disadvantaged were not considered worthy, John cared deeply about doing right by all of these people.