Brian Ellis

I am so grateful to have known Brian Ellis for the past school year. He was such a humble spirit... just doing whatever he wanted. I feel like even though we only spent an hour or so together each week, I saw that he would be a fun hiking guide or a great person to be outdoors with. As I'm sure many of you also know, he simply just wanted us to challenge ourselves and our habits in our daily lives to work towards a more sustainable lifestyle. He wanted not only for us to make lasting changes in our own lives but he wanted us to see how they were feasible in an LA lifestyle, so he changed with us.

The day before this past Valentine's Day one of my friends passed away during a skiing accident. Just as Brian passed doing what he loved, my friend Richard passed doing what he loved -- skiing. It's kind of a full circle thing for me... the reason why I signed up for the Global Environment cluster was because I took a month long summer camp at UCSD (I lived there too) and learned about the effects of climate change on marine life at the Scripps Institue of Oceanography. That was the summer after my freshman year of high school and was wholeheartedly one of the best months of my life. Richard was in that class with me.

I think Brian reached us all. We were all inspired by his awesome toe-shoes, his adventures into the wild, his free spirit. I think we've all learned a lot from him and I'm sure that was his only goal.