I’m so very sad to hear of the deaths this week of Gladys Kamonya and David Zarem­b­ka. I know Gladys only through her out­sized rep­u­ta­tion but David I knew start­ing in the 1990s as part of the U.S. war tax resis­tance move­ment. He was always a steady pres­ence there, act­ing as the nation­al group’s trea­sur­er and adult-in-the-room for younger activists like me.

In recent years I’ve known him as a steady Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tor, writ­ing fea­tures and many (many!) Forum let­ters — he was always quick to email to tell us when an arti­cle uncon­scious­ly assumed a U.S. per­spec­tive! He was a self­less net­work­er, always try­ing to build bridges between dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends. Friends Jour­nal’s Octo­ber 2019 issue on “Friends in Africa” was ground­break­ing for us. His­tor­i­cal­ly, U.S. unpro­grammed Friends have tend­ed to dis­miss African Friends for rea­sons of the­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry — and sure­ly race. It felt heal­ing to invite those voic­es into the mag­a­zine; some of those rela­tion­ships have con­tin­ued in sub­se­quent issues. But that 2019 issue would not have been as far-ranging had it not been for David’s work shar­ing the call for sub­mis­sions and encour­ag­ing and advis­ing authors.

As I edit arti­cles nowa­days, I some­times hear a voice ask “what kind of email will David Zarem­b­ka write me if I don’t con­tex­tu­al­ize this author’s state­ment?” It’s kind of hard to believe I won’t be see­ing him pop up in my inbox again. I’m sure there are so many more David and Gladys sto­ries to be shared. I only knew one small cor­ner of their min­istries but I can hon­est­ly attest that I am a bet­ter per­son for it. Rest in peace and God bless, Gladys and David.

Links:

• Here was David’s very beau­ti­ful arti­cle on life at Lumakan­da Friends Church in Kenya.
• His Friends Jour­nal bylines go on for pages.
• He was pas­sion­ate about peace­mak­ing and about let­ting U.S. Friends know just how much amaz­ing work was hap­pen­ing in East Africa.
• He was still involved with the Nation­al War Tax Resis­tance Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee, which record­ed a talk he gave in 2014.
• Here is the kind of Forum let­ter David excelled in: