I have been trying to think how to put into words what I feel about my friend Robert since I heard he passed away. It is difficult, to say the least.

I have been friends with Robert since not long after his arrival here on Gay Authors. We bonded over our shared love of the stories written by dkstories. In fact, we both loved the one story that we never posted here on Gay Authors. It's over on Nifty if you want to figure it out.

When the time came for me to finally break Gay Authors away from my own personal business and set up a corporation to run and control Gay Authors, Robert was the first on board. The R from CDEJR is for Robert.

In this day and age with our hyper partisan politics, our business partnership is a bit strange. As many people know, Robert worked for the Democrat Party of California and was a liberal supporter of Barrack Obama. In politics, I'm his polar opposite. Robert though, contrary to many these days, understood the simple truth of strength through diversity. We have had a balance here at Gay Authors and it has been Robert's quiet, steady hand keeping us sane.

Each of the admins on the site serves a role. In many cases, these roles aren't visible to the public. Robert was our quiet consensus builder. He served the role as Member Advocate because he could lean out and listen to all sides of something and come up with an equitable solution. It wasn't the flashy stuff or the out front stuff, but it was a large part of the glue that kept us together.

I can't put into words how much he will be missed by me and by our community.

May you Rest in Peace, friend.

***UPDATE*** Many people have asked where they can send flowers. We have noticed this message from Robert's family: "If you would like to make a donation in lieu of flowers, Robert's Charity of choice is The Trevor Project. ( www.trevorproject.org ) or you can help in the fight against the cancer that took Robert by donating to The Lymphoma Research Foundation (www.lymphoma.org). Thank you."