CUB Mourns the Loss of Our Voice

by Bob Jenks, CUB Executive Director

Shannon Floyd, CUB’s Business and Special Projects manager passed away this past week. Among her work at CUB, Shannon was the founder of this on-line newsletter (our blog) and has been the writer behind it since its inception.

When Shannon first approached me and proposed that CUB start a weekly blog as a communications tool, I was skeptical. It seemed like a great deal of work for a product that few people would notice.

I was wrong. Shannon was right. From Day One we have gotten a great deal of positive feedback on the blog. People have repeatedly told me how amazed they have been at the ability of CUB to take wonkish energy issues and explain them in understandable terms. What folks did not know was that this was due to a single person here: Shannon.  Not only did she take our wonkish policy issues and explain them to people, she did so in a personal manner with a sense of humor. She provided a voice for CUB’s blog. And we have gotten more positive feedback about that voice than anything we have created in the last 15 years.

We will continue the blog, but I worry that without Shannon’s voice, it will not be the same. CUB will continue to do important policy work, but our ability to communicate it in an appealing way has been diminished. If we get too wonkish, or too boring, please have patience. What she did was not easy.

Shannon was an amazing woman. She was more than our Business Manager. She was our friend. She was 39, a great mother and a trained opera singer (this was a surprise to many of us…listen to a sample of her work at the links in the right-hand column. She had a truly beautiful voice.) It was about a year ago that she found out she had breast cancer and less than 2 months since she found out the cancer had spread. She was well-loved here at CUB and over the last few weeks, as friends have come out of the woodwork to offer her support, we have found that she was well-loved by many, many people.

At CUB she had a central role. I was dependent on her for everything from payroll and bookkeeping to editing my writing. And she was the best editor I ever found. She would pull out her red pen and mark up the document. And she would mark it up a lot. I mean a lot. But when she was done, there would be no grammatical errors left, and the wording would be changed and improved in ways that made it much more interesting. People will find that I am much less articulate now that I do not have Shannon.

Some of my fondest memories are sitting around the conference table in our office eating lunch. At those times we talked about raising children, food, literature, music, politics, traveling and countless other subjects. We watched clips of the Daily Show and laughed. For most of her time at CUB, Shannon was the only one who could reset the time on our clock without standing on a chair. She was a tall woman in a largely height-challenged office.

Shannon was also a very good friend of my wife, Jill. They met regularly for lunch, sang karaoke, went to movies and every year they got together to watch the Academy Awards. Her 6 year-old daughter Hana is a friend of my 7 year-old daughter Macy. This is a personal loss and a loss for my entire family.

Shannon was one of the nicest people I have known. Everyone who met Shannon liked her. Even at the most stressful times, Shannon was calm and caring. Jason Eisdorfer, our former staff attorney went to visit her on Monday, a few hours before she passed away. She was very concerned that Jason makes sure that he is helping and giving support to our new staff attorney, Catriona McCracken. That was Shannon. Even at that point, she was worrying about others and trying to organize support for someone else.

This is a hard time for many of us. Shannon was too young, too nice and too important to us for this to have happened. Her daughter had an amazing mother and deserved to grow up with Shannon in her life. But life is not fair. We all know that intellectually and today we feel that in our gut.

But we will remember her. Every time we send out a blog, we will remember her as the founder of the blog. Every time I write testimony, I will remember her ability to transform my writing. Every year when the Academy Awards are on, we will remember how she loved the movies and loved the spectacle that is the Academy Awards. Every Fall and Spring when we have to reset our clocks we will remember her doing so without standing on a chair. And every time we invite her daughter over for a play date we will be reminded of how much they look alike.

Ultimately, we will remember Shannon, not for the loss we feel today, but for the love that she gave us.

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