If you happened to be up around 3:30 a.m. last Saturday morning, you might have seen what looked like a lunar eclipse in the night sky. It was, in fact, the soul of Jack Young passing up to heaven, ready to take up new challenges.

Jack had passed away, after a short period of time in our local Hospice of the Panhandle. It would have been just like him to make his departure without fanfare in the middle of the night, avoiding the limelight. Appropriate services will be held in honor of his life later this spring, but I wanted the community to know of our loss as soon as possible.

Few people have had such a profound impact on their individual lives, institutions and organizations (such as the Shepherd Lifelong Learning program and Shepherdstown Area Independent Living, to only name the most recent). After highly successful military and civilian careers and then moving to Shepherdstown, Jack devoted boundless energy and compassion to enriching the lives of everyone that he encountered here in the Eastern Panhandle. I used to teasingly refer to him as “Saint Jack,” because he set such a high standard for others to follow. We don’t have anything like the aviators’ “missing man formation flyover,” so I guess he had to make his own last Saturday night.

The world is a better place, because Jack Young left his mark on it. The best we can do now is, in the Navy tradition, wish him, “Fair winds and following seas.”

Mike Austin, of Shepherdstown