I knew Kirk for 24 years. We were friends, and I loved this man. I observed Kirk grow from a bit of loud, boisterous, sometime angry fellow to the great man he had long since become before he left this life. Descriptive words that come to mind to describe Kirk include: strong, hard-headed, tender, kind, and encourager, a mentor, smart, brilliant, hard worker, determined, focused, positive, hopeful, confident, honest, high integrity, caring, sympathetic, demanding, assertive, fun, happy, comical, prankster, loving son, a man of Christ, thoughtful of mother, admirer of father, loving brother, loving and faithful friend, listening ear, willing to reach out, a leader, pioneer, risk-taker, self-assured, not arrogant, humble, interested in you, self-sacrificing, courageous, graceful – what a guy! I could go on and on (I borrowed this word gathering approach from Kirk’s Memorial Service which I thought was particularly moving).

I first met Kirk when I began work with Ferguson Crossing Pipeline (FCPL) in San Antonio, Texas in April of 1984. At that point I was hired as the company pilot charged with flying the firm’s plane with Sr. Management to our locations in the Southwest United States. I had wanted a job that would enable me to acquire additional business skills apart from flying the planes we owned. This is how I would later come to work for Kirk. We both worked for Byron Greene, the Sr. V.P. of FCPL which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwestern Gas Pipeline (SWGPL) whose parent company was Mitchell Energy & Development (MEDC). Mr. Greene hired me to fly the plane but said that he wanted me in the office when I wasn’t flying which is exactly what I wanted. I began to work for the Chief Company Pipeline Engineer, Ray Solis. When I was not flying, part of my job was to execute certain gas pipeline compressor simulations for the engineering team. These programs involved use of the company’s computer system which Kirk and his group maintained. Although Kirk headed the firm’s accounting team (as a CPA and MBA from Baylor), he loved the computer side of things as well and went at both with the great vigor he did with everything he decided to undertake. The system we were using during the 1984-87 timeframe was a Nixdorf which had these huge 40 mb disks and was slow on today’s terms but at this point in time was state of the art. As Kirk and I got to know each other in this IT area, he sometime flew along with Mr. Greene and other senior managers to Mineral Wells, Dallas, Beaumont and The Woodlands. Kirk was a bit of a white-knuckled flyer. Knowing that Kirk was a prankster I was able to get even with him on a few occasions. Once, descending into Mineral Wells, Kirk and I were alone in the plane and we began to pick up a bit of light icing on the wings and windshield. It was minor from an aviation point of view but Kirk grew concerned and I made the most of it, seeming as if we were going to crash. I finally let him in on it and he slugged me in the shoulder and we laughed together. Another time, he was alone in the back of our twin-engine Navajo with his feet up like the big boss. I shoved the yoke forward and sent him airborne. He was initially scared but the first thing he thought of was that he wanted to do this to our mutual co-worker and friend, Bob Sosa. So, the time came when the three of us were to fly to Mineral Wells from San Antonio. Kirk had pre-arranged with me to pull the trick with Bob. He signaled me and while they were both relaxed in the back I did the trick again and sent them flying in the cabin. Kirk was laughing so hard I thought he was going to hurt his side. Kirk was so full of life and it spread to those around him.

In 1986, the price of a barrel of oil descended to $15 per barrel (imagine that!). The management of MEDC decided to close the San Antonio office of FCPL, roll it into SWGPL and move a few of the employees to The Woodlands. Byron and Kirk both wanted to insure my family and me were secure and after allowing me to decide between finding another flying job or staying with SWGPL and work for Kirk. It was at this point in our relationship that Kirk and came even closer together. I realized it was Kirk who had persuaded Byron to offer me the position which launched me into my IT career. While I was able to still fly for the company, I predominately worked in office because we had sold all except one airplane due to the price of oil and changes in the tax code. Kirk became my friend and boss and mentor/coach. Since Bob Sosa and I were moving to The Woodlands and needed to locate our own housing, Kirk offered us to stay at the large home he had purchased. Kirk was generous. Kirk was smart because he purchased the large home knowing it was a good investment which he later sold for a good profit.

We had a great time during the 6 or 9 months the three of us lived in Kirk’s house. I’ve told people that Kirk was not big on keeping house during that time. Not sure how that changed later but it got pretty bad then. When all the dishes we had got dirty, we’d eat fast food for a while until it became intolerable then the 3 of us would go on a clean-up rampage at Kirk’s direction. Kirk had his dog Arthur who he dearly loved. This is one area I could see into Kirk’s heart; he was a tender-hearted man. Once, when Kirk was on his stationary bike in his bedroom, he was toying with Arthur as he rode. Unfortunately, Arthur lost his balance and snout came into the spokes of the bike and was hurt quite badly. Kirk was devastated and felt so badly for many days as Arthur healed. I think Kirk once broke up with a girl he was dating and did not feel as badly about that as he did his accident with Arthur. Kirk was sometimes a bit of a messy eater. Back in the old days, we had to wear ties and often white shirts to work. One lunchtime Kirk and I went to the local bar-b-q restaurant. As Kirk ate his ½ bar-b-q chicken with exuberance, he flicked a wing and sprayed me with sauce from across the table. As I was cleaning up he started laughing so much I thought he was going to cry. We both joined laughing. Kirk and I had such a great time together as I’m sure so many of his friends did.

Possibly to get even with me for the flying incident, one morning as I was just waking up for work, Kirk and Bob put a Beatles song, “Back in the U.S.S.R.”. The beginning of the song has a loud jet plane sound as if it’s going over. They cranked the stereo up to maximum volume and turned on the song. I jumped from bed, went to the staircase and yelled, “Wow, did ya’ll hear that!” (We lived in the IAH flight path). Kirk and Bob were downstairs laughing like crazy – I know this was Kirk’s idea. Kirk was so much fun. Once at work we were working on a computer monitor. As I supported the case, Kirk was delicately installing a new board into the slot. As he reached his hand in with a small screwdriver, he suddenly yelled “Eeewyow, ouch”, jumping back as if badly shocked. Of course it scared me and made me jump back only to find Kirk laughing his tail off. Another time as we performed a critical re-install of the operating system on our system, I sat at the keyboard while Kirk read a precise check-list that we were required to follow. It came to the last step, we looked at each other said, “ok, we’ve done it all – right?” When we agreed, I was to depress the return key to activate the re-installation. After one more nod at each other Kirk said, “Go-ahead”. As soon as I hit the key, Kirk yelled, “No, no, wait, don’t do it”. I tensed up only to find Kirk breaking his side laughing. Kirk was really a riot.

Sometime Kirk had a bit of a temper. He was an intense competitor. Playing on intramural softball and flag football it was always 110%. He was intense at work too. His passion sometime came with some temper. I sat just outside Kirk’s office. One morning I heard voices getting loud with one of his manager peers regarding some issues we had been working one. As things got louder, I heard a loud noise and a plastic trashcan came flying out of the door at a high rate of speed after Kirk had soccer-kicked it instead hitting the other gentleman in the face. I jumped into the room to get between them until things cooled off. As the years passed, Kirk’s temper mellowed a great deal but his spirit and zeal for everything, including God’s work became even more powerful. On one occasion an employee intentionally deleted some files due to anger at another system user. Kirk demanded to his boss that they be terminated immediately. He was denied and was told to look at things from a different perspective. After a few weeks we had both begun to forgive the person. Eventually, Kirk bore witness to the power of forgiveness and compassion, understanding, and sincerity. We both learned a great deal from this event and became better people for it. That employee later became good friends to both of us and we stayed in touch long after we all left Mitchell Energy.

Other fun times at Mitchell Energy included an instance that Kirk wanted me to set up a trick on a worker who had recently moved onto a new job in our group that involved using our computer system. She was unfamiliar with this system and skittish about using it. With Kirk’s oversight, I devised a message that would appear alerting the user that she had deleted all files. When the trick was activated the last laugh was on Kirk and me because Betty got so flustered we thought she was having medical trouble and later learned she did have a heart problem – this caught our attention.

With Kirk we had fun, but we worked hard. He worked harder than most but allowed me and others with families to have a more normal work schedule. He was fair in this way and considerate of others. He was very smart and a visionary. As we moved first from the Nixdorf in San Antonio to a Prime computer to Unix and Oracle, Kirk’s foresight kept him and the companies he worked for highly competitive. Kirk was a great asset to Mitchell Energy, Compaq Computer and ultimately Oracle. At Mitchell, Kirk wrote some Fortran Programs to calculate gas volume which some are likely still in use today. He was my mentor during this time teaching not only the IT side of things but accounting, budgeting and business skills. I owe a great deal to Kirk and this document is only a small testament to how he helped my growth. For Kirk, there was no room for mediocrity. In addition to his vision for the future, he sought out new things when the challenge waned or the frustration with corporate red tape seemed so wasteful. This combined with other factors led him to one day give his notice at Mitchell Energy and head “to the mountains” and become a “ski bum” for a while. I talked to him a few times when he was in Colorado. He worked as a clerk at hotel reception among other things. I think we are all glad Kirk got this out of his system. This excursion in his life illuminates how Kirk sometimes made decisions. He decided…. then he did it. Don’t get it in his way.

During this time and the years that followed I got to know a great deal about Kirk and his family. His dad was his model, he loved his mother, and he spoke of his sisters often. We heard about his High School job at the Taco Bell in Midland, where, after a period time, told us he never wanted to see another refried bean in his lifetime. He told us about his hot-rod. He knew he made a bad choice on occasion and once when he attempted to out-run the police but his dad came for him and used it as a great learning experience. Kirk sure loved his father. I think this may have been where he got some of mischievousness. Kirk told us of his loves lost (was engaged once I believe) and I think he really deserved the love and companionship of a fine woman and I think he found this with Diane during the last couple of years of his life. Kirk shared with me that this meant so much to him and during the times that he and I got together after he was diagnosed; the love he and Diane shared was so meaningful to him.

Kirk always went at things with gusto. During our time at MEDC he read Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and was moved by it. Kirk purchased the tape set and a book for each of his direct reports. He then “suggested” we all gather at lunch 1 day per week and listen to a tape and discuss the topic. Later, I would realize how much this study enriched my life and I am grateful to Kirk for his leadership. He and I partnered so much during that time. He asked for my opinion on things and valued my input. He freely offered advice which helped me, and he accepted suggestions in a humble manner.

Kirk attended the church I’m a member of for some time (St. Luke’s Methodist). He mentioned that his mother would rather have him in a Baptist church but here he was again – doing his own thing  . Kirk was always on a spiritual search. He had a thirst for the wisdom, peace, and the strength that God provides. I think this is part of what happened when Kirk abruptly announced he was leaving MEDC and heading to Colorado to be a “ski bum”. I spoke to him a few times when he was up there and he seemed to have a good time. I think this experience was valuable for him and Kirk was one who had the strength to “just go do it”. He “found himself” to a degree and returned to Houston refreshed and ready for new challenges. He began work for Compaq Computer and from what he told me, he contributed a great deal to the business functions he served, charting a new path for improvement of their operations. This work done, Kirk started work for Oracle, a company he had always admired and for whom he knew his efforts would make a difference. Kirk was happy with his role at Oracle, they took good care of him and he was successful and continually challenged which is just what Kirk fed on. Kirk and I always shared suggestions for books and movies the other should watch. For example, I told him about the film “What the Bleep do we know” and he told me about the book and film, “The Secret”. We would share our thoughts on these and other things that influenced us in our walk through life. At this point in our relationship I realized that Kirk was one of the friends that my mom told me about. That is to say that you’ll have only a small number of really close friends, probably ones that could be counted on one hand – Kirk was one of these friends to me. While we may not have seen each other for 6 or 9 months, we were always there for each other. This is best summed up in writing by one of my favorite authors, Kahlil Gibran. It is from the book “The Prophet” and is entitled “On Friendship”. I’ve inserted it below:

It was about this time that he first bought a loft at the Rice Hotel which had been renovated and was one of the early in a trend of downtown Houston development. Kirk was always out front, he had good foresight on this and on the other loft he later purchased downtown. Kirk knew that my then wife was an Interior Designer and asked her to help him design each of his lofts. In both cases there were numerous “artifacts” he insisted that Stephanie work into the design scheme. While he generally accepted her suggestions and selection of artwork, there was one particular case that made a big enough impression to share with me at the dinner table one night. She was a bit annoyed that Kirk had this old, ugly (in her opinion), lime green couch that he insisted remain as a part of the furnishings. She attempted to move it to a remote part of the floor plan but Kirk wanted it where he wanted it – he was not giving up that couch. I suppose others may know the sentimental value of the couch better than we did.

September 11, 2001 hit us all hard but Kirk had a particularly close place to it. Kirk told me that he had been in Rome the previous week for an Oracle workshop, essentially a meeting to reward certain members of the team that had been especially productive for Oracle that quarter. One of the passengers who rushed the cockpit on the ill fated United Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, PA was Scott Beamer. Scott was an Oracle employee and had been a part of the meeting in Rome with Kirk and others and had left one day early to get back to his family. Kirk and the other Oracle team members were airborne over the Atlantic half way to New York when the planes hit the Twin Towers. Their flight turned around and went back to Rome. Kirk’s brother-in-law worked for the Army in the Pentagon at the time and after the plane hit there on 9/11 the family was terribly fearful, anxious, and prayerful as they worked to insure all the family members were ok. Thankfully they were. 9/11 was an event hard to comprehend and profound learning experience for all of us and Kirk relayed his special feelings of that day to me.

I had begun the habit of walking at Memorial Park several years ago and had not seen Kirk for almost one year. Then, rounding a curve, there was Kirk, running with a group of people training for the Houston Marathon. He had the bright-eyed smile and was full of life as we shouted at each other and agreed to call one another as he ran past. We did meet about a week later and had dinner to catch up. As we often did after we hadn’t seen one another for a while we did a good catch-up. His life was going very well and he offered empathy and support for me as I told him of my impending divorce and he encouraged me to do what God directed me to do and that he would be praying for me. Little did I know that I would soon be praying for him a great deal more.

Kirk called me a few weeks later and told him he had been having weird symptoms and was undergoing a battery of tests. The next time he phoned me was to tell me he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We both knew the prognosis but Kirk wouldn’t accept that it applied to him, and it didn’t for a long time. Kirk’s positive energy during this time rubbed off on me. I honestly felt as he did that he could be a part of the 5% that beat this illness. Kirk chose alternative treatments and lived much longer than was expected. He and I talked openly about it. Kirk is a brave man and a fighter. We saw each several times when I was in the downtown area and while I had a coffee or snack, he would have his special smoothie blended with his nutritionist’s ingredients. Handing them to the clerk at the shop who did this for him every day, Kirk had that twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face. I discussed some recent movies out and Kirk told me he wouldn’t be seeing some of the drama, death, fear-based movies but only positive uplifting ones. He was also avoiding news stations, etc. as they sometimes put a negative spin on things just to “sell papers” so to speak. This was part of his overall positive regimen.

It was around about this time that I began to date a woman. Early in our conversations, I learned that she attended Chapelwood. I said, “Oh, I have a friend who is my age that attends church”. She said, “Is that Kirk McGee?” when I said, “yes”, she told me that they both attended the same singles Sunday School Class. This was not a coincidence but rather God’s way of putting me back closer to Kirk (in my humble opinion) while leading me to a lady a really care for. I told Kirk I was seeing this lady and he told me, “Chip, she’s a great woman, and she has her heart in the right place”. Any endorsement like this from Kirk meant a great deal to me and was very assuring. I saw Kirk in that class and more frequently in the months that followed. I was also able to obtain more frequent updates on him than I otherwise have been able because there were periods when Kirk didn’t call or email and I didn’t want to a annoy him, rather knowing that he would contact me when he felt it was right.

In November 2007, Kirk called me to attend a Houston Texans game with him. Kirk insisted on driving and showed up to pick me up at my new house. He came in for a quick tour and just like the ole Kirk said, “Dog Chip, you’ve done pretty good for yourself!” I let him know that he had had a great deal to do with my success in the IT world. I am so glad I had the opportunity to tell him this. We enjoyed the game and when I got up to get some refreshments I asked Kirk what he wanted. He said nothing because he had smuggled in his Fiji Water and nutrition bars and couldn’t eat the “junk”. When I returned to my seat with my foot-long hotdog with all the toppings, he said, “Man, now that’s something I really miss ”. Walking to the parking lot after the game on that bright windy Sunday afternoon, Kirk told me it was the best he had felt in a long time and I was so glad to have spent the afternoon with him. On the way home from the game I spoke of my girlfriend and then Kirk told me again just how much Diane was adding to his life. He told me he wanted to have my girlfriend and me up to Tomball to go to dinner or something with him and Diane. I said that sounded good and to call me. The last time I saw Kirk he dropped me at my house and whizzed off in his BMW. I knew the holidays were busy and waited for him to contact me after the New Year. Then, I heard the news of his death. It has taken a while to say goodbye and this letter helps me to do so.

We all loved Kirk. His wit, his integrity, his search for his God, and his enthusiasm for life. Kirk, in the way he lived his life reminds us all to live each day to the fullest. Kirk had a tremendous impact on my life and I am blessed to have known him. In the next life we’ll all be together again and I’m sure that Kirk will be waiting right there with a gag to make me jump or to have us all laughing until our sides hurt.

Life is just a whisper of smoke, like morning dew on the grass.

Finally, follows is another writing of from the “Prophet” that has always offered me solace when death has touched my life.