The latest issue of Newsline is up. Commencement is front and center, but the monthly journal also talks about our student team’s EPA award, LEED certification for Pondside III, the KSC 100 blog… and the sad news of the passing of Kate Phillips, a former professor of mine.

Here she is in a small clip from a 1937 film:

One story I’ll share here about Kate, because she deserves it… I had her as a professor in 1989, during a semester where I was quite lost in terms of what I wanted to do. Or actually, I was lost in terms of college, because I had decided to become a folk singer and move down to Athens, GA — so schoolwork was just not a priority.

Kate asked me why I wasn’t showing up for screenwriting class when I obviously loved screenwriting so much, and I explained that I was quitting college at the end of the semester to pursue my dream. She told me that if I loved music I could do music on the side, and I’d enjoy it as much, or more. She said to trust her — she’d been there and she knew.

And more than anybody, there was just a depth of understanding in the way she said that to me, so cheery on that Spring day a couple weeks before finals.

Everybody I knew tried to talk me out of quitting school. My parents. Many friends. All my professors.

And I did it anyway. But the only person that really made me reconsider going, just for a day, was Kate. As things went from bad to worse in Athens, I’d think back occasionally on that conversation on that day. In fact, I occasionally still do. I can remember the bright room in Morrison, the rustle of the trees, and most of all, the feeling that when she told me that I didn’t have to play life as an all-or-nothing game that she really knew what she was talking about.

Looking at the obituary in The New York Times, and at her IMDb list, it becomes just how apparent that she really did know. She succeeded at being a star and a screenwriter. And then she decided to succeed at being a wife, a mother, and a teacher — and to do that, she voluntarily left her previous success behind her.

She was so incredibly content with the choices she had made in life. She put her heart into what she did, and never stopped laughing.

She will be missed.