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Fletcher Follies is one of Fletcher’s great traditions where students spend countless hours coming up with obscure nerdy humor about international relations and life in general when they should be learning about the Solow Model or Savings Led Microfinance.  It’s about as rowdy as it gets for a grad school full of smart people.  Last year there was a video bemoaning the marriage of one of our career center staffers, a spoof on Meet with Press with Jacob and Michael interviewing a Fletcher prof and much much more.  

One of the highlights of the night was a video from Erica Murray about how she had dropped out of school and was in California to get a nose job followed by a montage of photoshopped pics of her and Britney Spears both sporting bald heads and causing general havok.  In reality Erica was in San Francisco receiving treatment for leukemia and preparing for a bone marrow transplant.  The rowdy night was interrupted by a poignant moment when, after the video, they brought up a live webcam link to Erica on the big screen and the whole auditorium went nuts. 

I often write about how technology has changed our lives and brought us together in ways unimagineable a few years ago.  Usually these ways are good, heart warming and fun, like tea parties between grandparents, video sharing on youtube or a way to fight flu epidemics.  But technology has also brought us together in times of difficulty.  I know this first hand from the way in which we shared our miscarriage with those of you who read this blog and from the other night when I read of Erica’s passing on her blog.  

Erica was my friend and while we were not super close I am grateful for the time I spent with her.  These past months I have followed her progress through her blog, followed the ups and downs as the bone marrow transplant appeared to be a success and was deeply saddened as she relapsed for a second time.  Given our moving about these past months it would have been so easy to lose contact and hear from a friend months later that she had passed away.  I am grateful that didn’t happen.  

Given that Fletcher is a school of internatianal relations our dispersal after graduation is even more pronounced than your typical graduate school.  My friends that I communicate most with are in Boston, Bosnia, Jerusalem and Hanoi.  But as I read the news of Erica’s passing I was once again grateful both for the strength of that community and for the ways that technology has allowed us to remain close in joys and in sadness.  Every single person’s Facebook status remembered her, her blog was a gathering place for sharing memories and condolences and tonight I was able to read the eulogy given at her funeral.     

Erica will be missed - by me and by the whole Fletcher Mafia around the world.  I am grateful for the life of Erica and for the ways in which I could still be a part of her life and her death even from so great a distance.  I am also grateful for the ways in which technology has allowed me to be a part of your lives and you of mine.  I am grateful for the chance to share in joys and sadnesses whether it be in a pregnancy in Eastern Europe or a miscarriage in Honduras.  For now, I will forever remember Erica’s smiling face on that web cam as she recovered from her “nose job.”