As I write this it is Tuesday Oct 2 and I am looking forward to next weekend’s Retirement/Celebration party for UMich Professor Bunyan Bryant at the Ann Arbor Sheraton and thinking about the how and why of this gifted visionary organizer.

There are clues in a letter I received from him recently.

Like Einstein, Bunyan recognizes the importance of the Imagination. He wrote:

”We have lost much of our ability to envision the future in imaginary ways. I remember as a kid lying on my back on the grass in my yard and peering up at the clouds. I would do this with other kids in the neighborhood. We would compete with one another and help one another see what we saw. Somewhere along the way with the increased responsibility of adulthood, people lost much of their ability to be imaginative. Perhaps we should solicit our children to teach us how to regain our imagination.”

Born and raised in the segregated South, Bunyan realizes (as Jimmy did) that people of color not only have special needs but a special role to play in transforming this country.