COMMENTARY
Cherished friend showed us how to live, love
More than a few times before he died in October 2006 at age 94, I heard Buck O’Neil talk about hate.
The chairman of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum said: “I never learned how to hate. I hate cancer.”
O’Neil’s words flooded back last week at the memorial service for my friend Julie Hise. She was diagnosed with cancer in April and died June 28.
O’Neil and Hise would have been kindred souls. Each loved to hang out in the 18th and Vine Jazz District. O’Neil had his office at the museum.
Hise frequented the Blue Room to hear live jazz. She was friends with the musicians and patrons. For years, she also took Tangila L. Roberts’ kickboxing classes at the Gregg-Klice Community Center.
But Hise was best known in the Kansas City area as the heart and soul of Communiversity at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. For 13 years she recruited people to teach classes ranging from belly dancing to religion.
She worked diligently with her supervisor, Rick Mareske, and others to assemble and deliver the Communiversity catalogue and get people to take the classes. When tempers flared, Hise joked and brought people back to earth.
She did the same thing in the UMKC admissions office, where she worked part time, helping students and getting most to leave smiling. Hise did the same thing when she gave horseback riding lessons, calming down people and animals.
Hise had no children, but she acted like everybody’s mom. She had that awesome gift.
It’s what led platoons of people to see her when she was hospitalized. People continued to visit Hise at her Northland home, where her husband, Bob, and St. Luke’s Hospice cared for her until the end.
“St. Luke’s Hospice rocks,” Hise said during one of my many visits to her home.
Hise, 46, brought so many people in different circles together. One was at a June 26 celebration of her life at a cafe. She was too weak to attend so we text messaged her as if she were there.
She constantly told me she was an old hippie. I said, “Julie, I was too young to be a hippie, and you’re younger than I am.”
Her response: “I just am.”
As they did with O’Neil, people of all races and socio-economic backgrounds called Hise their friend. They were health food fans, people who made beer and wine as her husband did, folks who enjoyed gourmet dining, people who were into art, music, and literature and folks who loved horses and dogs. Her favorite was the science-fiction community. She helped run sci-fi conventions.
Hise also connected people who she thought could benefit from each other. When people balked, Hise would bark, “Nobody listens to the little brown haired-girl.” That usually caused folks to give in.
At the memorial service at Westport Presbyterian Church, Roxanne Mellick handed me a card that said, “Little Brown Haired Girls International, Mouthy Shop Help.” I laughed about that with Mellick and others in that Hise group.
Purple was Hise’s favorite color. It was the color of her truck, a lot of her clothes and her urn. It was impossible to keep Hise from helping anyone in distress. Even though she had back problems, she insisted on using her pickup to help me when I moved downtown.
Even after she was diagnosed and weakened by the cancer, she insisted on helping when my daughter Leslie needed wood hauled from the Kansas City Art Institute to a warehouse in the West Bottoms to complete work for her senior thesis. Hise also attended Leslie’s art show and then went to visit my dying nephew in the hospital.
Like O’Neil, Hise loved to make people smile. I wrote about that in a Nov. 26 column, explaining how a smile at a Dairy Queen in Leavenworth was the price she paid to get exceptional service.
Hise gave to others right to the end, donating her long, signature brown hair to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that manufactures hair pieces for children suffering from medical-related hair loss.
Like O’Neil, Hise taught us how to live. She taught us how to love. She taught us how to laugh, and with dignity, grace and courage, she taught us how to say goodbye.
Lewis W. Diuguid is a member of The Star’s Editorial Board. Reach him at 816-234-4723 or Ldiuguid@kcstar.com.