Work hard in silence—let your success be your noise.

                                                                   Frank Ocean

Early this spring, I spent a couple of weeks hiking with my family in a remote patch of the Redwoods National Forest in Northern California. The area was deserted—it was a quiet time of year, and we were at the very beginning point of the pandemic. It seemed like the whole world was frozen in place, trying to figure out what might come next.

One particular forest had an interesting feature—benches spaced every half mile or so, dedicated to individuals with a plaque about their lives. Most plaques had a quick note about philanthropy or family. But it was the words on this bench dedicated to Florence Genevieve Saperstein that stay with me to this day:

She was a beautiful woman and even lovelier in the way she treated people. Everyone who ever knew her loved and revered her for her unselfishness, her joyful spirit, and her commitment and service to others.

I read the words a couple of times, looking at the bench, and then looking up at the canopy of gargantuan trees, a hushed natural cathedral.

It was a surreal moment in a surreal week. Each day we would hike on long trails, out of cell phone range and out of touch with the world beyond. In the late afternoon we’d drive back to an Airbnb, reconnect to Wi-Fi or turn on the television, and discover how much more of normal life had disappeared in the previous eight hours. The date stamps on these photos is March 12, the day after the NBA and other sports leagues paused their seasons. The day after Tom Hanks announced he had COVID. The day after the World Health Organization had declared a pandemic. It was that brief transition stretch when we were all realizing we were on the threshold of a challenging time that would be like no other in our lives, with no points of reference from the past to guide us.

She was a beautiful woman and even lovelier in the way she treated people.

I read those words and looked up at those trees again. Florence Genevieve Saperstein’s life was not even a speck of carbon in one of the hundreds and hundreds of tiny rings in one of those trees.

Everyone who ever knew her loved and revered her for her unselfishness, her joyful spirit, and her commitment and service to others.

I read those words and knew the events of that cataclysmic week meant nothing in the scheme of the hundreds of years these trees had stood silently, enduring fires and floods and man-made ravages.

And yet.

One woman in her brief time on earth had such an impact on others that those beautiful words would be read by scores of hikers, all on our own unique journeys through this world, reminding us of how much is possible in one life.

This time is a test of who we are. It is not too difficult to be gracious through a short-term trial. It feels impossible to be unselfish and joyful when we have no idea when the trial will end. Whatever Florence Genevieve Saperstein went through in her life, she managed the impossible. And so her influence endures, if only in making travelers pause and consider how they want their own lives to be remembered.

Brenda Power

Founder, Choice Literacy