Edward "Eddie" Sperry

This piece was originally entered onto the Online Guestbook in the Boston Globe Obituaries section on October 22, 2006.

I've known Eddie Sperry since I was a young girl, when he and I attended Peabody Elementary School together. He had boundless energy and was full of life. We clicked from the second we met...we were even both voted "class clowns" in our 8th grade yearbook! :)

One of my all-time favorite memories of Eddie was in photography class. We had to have been in 7th or 8th grade, and were learning how to manipulate the cameras, and to see images as art through that tiny little frame. Our group was brought over to Radcliffe Field, and he and I were hanging out, taking a break, lying on our backs in the grass on a warm spring afternoon.

He rolled over from his back to his stomach, picked a blade of grass, and said to me, as he was examining it, "Did you ever really look at one of these things? They're funny looking and beautiful". I rolled over then too, and grabbing the camera, snapped a closeup of a single blade, sticking up at an awkward angle....up and away from its gazillion grassblade brothers and sisters, as if declaring its immediate and imperative independence.

I still have that picture somewhere, and whenever I look at it, I always think of Eddie. Funny looking and beautiful... and free.

My thoughts and prayers are with the entire Sperry family, all his loved ones, and his fans... like me. A shining light has been snuffed out. Plucked from the universe like a blade of grass on a warm spring afternoon.

Edward L. Sperry, or "Eddie", as I always knew him, died sometime in early September, 2006 in Bankock, Thailand. He was 43.


~~Originally posted on my MySpace blog on October 8, 2007