Johanna Elizabeth Hove (Becker) Memorial Fund
Johanna was my first very close friend. We stayed best friends for 20 years. We met in middle school and urged each other to ever more towering academic achievements. She and I talked about Aegis when it was still in its most nascent stages 8 years prior. Her life was cut tragically short a year later, but her story will live on in the myriad people she has impacted and in every life that Aegis will go on to affect.
Johanna was my first very close friend. We stayed best friends for 20 years. We met in middle school and urged each other to ever more towering academic achievements. She and I talked about Aegis when it was still in its most nascent stages 8 years prior. Her life was cut tragically short a year later, but her story will live on in the myriad people she has impacted and in every life that Aegis will go on to affect.
Johanna was many things to many people. She was a scholar, an avid reader, an accomplished tennis player, a certified yoga instructor, a triathlete, a body builder, a practicing psychologist, an entrepreneur, a friend, a daughter, and a mother. In 32 short years, Johanna accomplished many things. I am very proud to have known her and the impression she has left upon me is indelible.
Johanna was always a strong willed woman and she really helped me to find this strength in myself. She didn’t spend a lot of time concerning herself with what others thought of her- instead confidently blazing a trail. Johanna was 11 months younger than myself, but often she gave me the impression of being an older sister.
In some very strange ways I feel her presence more now than ever. She was supposed to be here helping me with this venture. She was planning on eventually teaching with Aegis. I remember vividly the last time I sat with her talking. I told her the story of Wangari Maathai’s hummingbird parable and I asked her if she would come teach at Aegis. She said she was uncertain that she still had the academic acumen. I asked what the integral of x squared is and she promptly replied x cubed divided by 3 plus a constant. At that point, it had been 16 years she had taken a calculus class. Buoyed by her own quick response and ease of remembering, she relaxed. She conceded that maybe I was right (something she tried not to do on principal).
Now in February of 2023, as we move towards our inaugural class I wonder what she would think. I hope she would be proud and I know that while in some sense, we will never teach together, in another, we will teach together every day for the rest of my life. My eventual goal, once we have a permanent space of our own, is to name the campus the Johanna Elizabeth Hove Memorial campus. I would like a small piece of the world to reflect an optimistic and youthful vision of a better world that we shared for so many years.
-Jason
2/25/2023
To Johanna and those who have contributed in her memory,
I am sad you did not live to see the era of Covid. I think it would be a source of strange ironic amusement and great hopefulness for you as it was for me. Many people have bemoaned the economic and psychological difficulty of living through the pandemic, but if you cast your net a bit wider then there is a different story. All the resources of humanity came together for a singular cause- to defeat a disease that threatened our global way of life. Our combined scientific knowledge and understanding came together and we triumphed. Many people see a story of divisions and I difficulties, but I see a story of the unconquerable human spirit at its best. I think you would see that story too, Johanna.
We live in a complicated world where a story has many perspectives though. I think you, as much as anyone, taught me that. And even after your death, you have continued to teach me: there is no justice for the past; there is only the potential of a more just future. We will search and muddle our way to find the path to that more just future. Teaching and education are the best way that I’ve found.
I miss you so much now though. I am a great teacher, but I do not have your interpersonal skills, your organizational skills, or your ability to plan without end. You were such a complement to my strengths and I am doing my best to live up to that, but it is very difficult. One of the often rehashed conversations we had was how lucky our lives had been and how we wished to somehow give that back. Thank you for the time we shared.
I also wish to thank all the people who have donated or helped in anyway. You honor the memory of an extraordinary person.
If you have a story, photos, ect. that you would like to add please email theaegisinstitute@gmail.com
