In early March 2020, a small but poignant obituary was posted to the memorial Web site EverLoved.com by an unknown user. It spoke movingly in honor of one Nicholas Alahverdian—immortalized in the header with a clip-art oil portrait and a stock image of some golden flowers—who was variously described as a “painter, author, amateur ornithologist, political scientist, sociologist, accomplished orator, and child welfare reform advocate,” as well as a “beloved community leader … to the residents of the State of Rhode Island.”
Alahverdian’s last words to his gathered family urged them to “fear not and run towards the bliss of the sun,” and at the moment of his death the song from the credits of the 1997 Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey vehicle, Contact, rang out in the room. “Earlier in the month,” the eulogy continued, “the House [of Representatives] adjourned with a moment of silence in memory of Mr. Alahverdian.” A great man—a Harvard man, no less—had been lost. An angel had departed this earthly realm. Alahverdian, a “warrior” for children’s rights, was in a better place now.
