Andrew Clay Gaskin, Part 1

My friend, former-roommate, brother-in-Christ, and brother-in-arms Andrew Gaskin passed away on May 13th. I shared a series of writings on Facebook, but I thought I should post them here, too, in case his kids ever Google search his name or something.[Obituary]

I met Andrew (or Drew, as he later preferred) in the spring of 1996, after I’d transferred to the University of Hawai`i – Manoa. We became roommates in the fall of that year, after I'd moved out of the dorms and into an off-campus place at 1825 Dole St. He joined our friend Jeff and me as we moved out of that place and into the 1941 10th Avenue house in 1997.

Despite that place being only two bedrooms and one bathroom, we had a lot of other roommates. Some were real characters, like this one who used scuba gear to collect golf balls from golf courses and wash them in our washing machine.

Andrew was a compassionate guy. On two occasions, he persuaded me that we should help homeless men (that our other roommate Sam knew) get back on their feet. It didn’t exactly work out as we had envisioned it, but I couldn’t argue with his optimism and desire to help people – and not just help people in a comfortable way, but to an *uncomfortable* level. He and Sam both were great examples of what it meant to really care for other people.

Andrew loved the Third Eye Blind song “Graduate,” because it typified that period in his life. I remember him desperately trying to finish his degree in geography, and then trying to find a decent job after graduation. There's a line in the chorus of the long that goes "Can I graduate!?!" that he'd misheard as "Cannot graduate!"

Andrew was also a really humble guy. Even once he'd gotten his degree, it wasn't beneath him to take a job cleaning floors until he could get get something full-time and permanent.

I'm sad that Andrew is gone. Knowing that he'd moved to the Midwest, I'd hoped to reconnect with him if I could have gotten a position at the Rock Island Arsenal or something.

It doesn't matter how many years it had been since I'd seen him last. I'll miss him.