It is with deep sadness that I write to you today. After a long-fought battle with cancer, my best friend, my partner in Robotics, and our Hero Paul George passed away Wednesday morning (Jan. 15th) He was surrounded by family and friends.
Paul worked to build a strong Legacy of mentoring students to pursue careers in STEM. He worked to not only inspire students but the mentors as well. To help all of us to develop the skills needed to effectively inspire and guide the kids. We will all work diligently to ensure that the values and passion for FIRST, that he instilled in us all, will be honored and passed on to the next generation.
The Services will be held on Wednesday January 22nd at:
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church
129 South Main Street
Akron, OH 44305
We are collecting video and audio messages for a video tribute to Paul George’s life. Our intent is to present this at the Celebration of Life event in early February.
If you’d like to submit, please record and upload a 5-20 second message to …
If recording a video, please try to record it horizontally. In either case of a video or audio recording, please try to record someplace that is quiet. If you’d like to be identified, please name your uploaded file with your full name, as well as your association to Paul.
If you’d rather just send a note, and would like it to be read as part of the tribute, please write the note in a word doc or pdf and upload that to the same link.
Paul George was in the founding class of FTAs from outside of FIRST HQ. He inspired nearly all of the current FTA corps either directly or through those who he trained. He was our example of doing things right. He will be sorely missed.
I, and I think the rest of 4611, offer our condolences to his family, friends, and team, who we know will sorely miss him. Best of luck, Lakota, getting through this tough time. I hope we’ll get to see you field a great robot in his honor.
While many of us FTAs will not be able to attend, be assured that Paul’s presence was still being felt this past weekend at FTA Training at HQ. WWPGD? is alive and well with us.
WWPGD? - is a Bracelet that we received last year at training - What Would Paul George Do? if we ran into a particularly sticky situation at an event, stop, step back, and think, “You aren’t going to please everybody, but how can you fairly please the most.”
Yesterday was the celebration of life for Paul. It truly was a family celebration. The bowling, FIRST, P&G and family stories just scratched the surface of who Paul really was. Paul didn’t have a P&G family or a FIRST family or a bowling family. We are in Paul’s family.
Paul was just a great human being, and he personified the culture change FIRST is trying to make. His dedication, hard work, sense of humor and patience were personally inspiring to me. When we started the CORI tournament I got to start spending a lot of time working with him getting fields set up, a tournament run, and the field torn back down. He was always willing to offer advice, something I appreciated. And he pitched in with whatever was needed. A couple of years ago after the WOW Championship he met Dr. B and back at the PAST Foundation in the dark to unload the box truck we had just packed up with the field, even though he had a couple hours drive awaiting him and could have just left after the field was packed. In my experience that generosity with his time and energy were completely typical. He will be greatly missed. But I can think of few legacies I would want that would be better than 1038 carrying on his example.