KENT F. ISPEN

I miss you Grampa.. I'll see you soon. I promise <3

While I never got to meet Kent, I feel like I know him a little through his daughter Laura. Like Kent, she loves and appreciates art, tends to procrastinate :-), is a kind, teacher and mentor to everyone around her and is very giving. I imagine there is a lot of Kent in her very artistic and talented son Lucas as well.

His family is very lucky his memory and the twinkle in his eye will live on in a million different ways through his grandchildren, his nieces and nephews, his art, and the students he taught and mentored. What a wonderful gift.

My sincere condolences go out to the entire family for losing such a huge force from their lives. I will keep you in my thoughts and my prayers.

When I first transferred to VCU Kent was my first adviser. That was in 1975. He introduced me to glass. A medium I still work with.

Through these years Kent had been my teacher, a very close friend, a comedian, part of my family, late night philosopher, fellow procrastinator, book of knowledge, and mentor. Later in our careers I was able to help him in the studio with research, polishing and problem solving.

Kent was one of the 2 people, besides family, I invited to my wedding.

We talked about our life problems and gave each other moral support and a good talking to when called for.
We criticized each others short comings knowing that neither was going to change and neither would let our verbal exchange hurt our friendship.

Kent was not a big believer in self promotion. He spent his energy on teaching and developing new ways to work with glass.

He was a very giving person.

He loved seeing his neighborhood grow, taking great pleasure in watching everything being built up. He would go out and survey what was completed the day before and talk to the workers.

He loved his boat, spending 1000's of hours and who knows how many tens of thousands of dollars on what he called his "Black Lover".

He loved his family most of all.

What he couldn't give emotionally he tried to make up any way he could. We almost always started our daily discussion with how the family was doing. He loved bragging about them and bringing me up to date on what everyone was up to.

I could go on for hours.

I'll close with giving my condolences to the family and picturing Kent sailing, with that big smile on his face.

Good bye friend. Happy sailing. We will all miss you.