To the editor:

Thank you for your article on Professor Barr's passing. I just wanted to write a few words. I was a friend of Don's, a former student and one of his teaching assistants.

Don Barr was such an influential and important part of my life. There are countless former students who would attest to what a wonderful person he was and an inspiration to us all.

He was an activist, a teacher and a friend who could be counted on to stand up for us, with us, on so many of the issues that marked our time at Cornell.

Along with Professor Turner, he co-taught perhaps one of the most important classes at Cornell about race and America. As a student and later teaching assistant for that class, I cannot tell you how much he added to the discourse on racism, not only at Cornell, but in our larger world.

He defined my Cornell experience, helping me find the voice to express my anger, my outrage. He taught me how to organize, how to build a grassroots movement, how to make my voice heard.

He was tireless, courageous, strong, passionate -- an incredible human being. I feel so blessed that I knew him. I will carry his teachings with me always and walk in the path he helped to pave for me and for so many others.

Don, you will be missed. You were loved, admired and, to a great extent, worshiped. I have never met, and strongly suspect that I will never meet, another human being like you.

-- Keisha Hudson, Class of '99