I learned today that Kent Jones passed away recently. Kent Jones was a long-time activist in the Esperanto movement. I met him very early on in learning Esperanto when I visited Chicago for a Zamenhof dinner. I was suprised to see a small man in a wheelchair with such a big voice.
Years later, I offered to give a haiku-talk -- my first one -- to the Chicago Esperanto group when I was in town giving talks at NARST and AERA. I met with Kent for an hour or so before my talk. He lived in a tiny little apartment with an Esperanto-speaking aid, who helped him get in and out of his wheelchair. Kent showed me a variety of the things he was working on, including a series of Esperanto ads that ran on the cable public access channel.
They took me to a little Korean restaurant nearby where I stood up and did my haiku reading. I had brought slides, but there wasn't an appropriate way to show them. I think people were kind of mystified by my tongue-in-cheek presentation: not sure they understood what I was saying well enough to laugh at all the jokes. After the talk, people were warm and friendly. Subsequent to that, Kent would think of me occasionally and send me notes now and again -- usually indicating that he thought I should be doing more to support the Esperanto movement. He occasionally would send me leads to try to get me to organize more.
Kent tirelessly promoted Esperanto in education, working with teachers in the Chicago schools. In recent years, I was aware of his focus in trying to get recognition of the problems inherent in using a national language like English as the common language in aviation: he collected instances where language problems had lead to crashes.