George Creel is Dead
by The Editor
Any Four Words would have continued on normally this month, but George Creel, one of our long-time contributors, unexpectedly died during the recent flooding. Before the storm, he refused repeated requests that he vacate his basement apartment. He did not appreciate anyone’s attempts to save him, and he turned away everyone with such force that nobody bothered to check on him until four days later, when he was found lying face-down in four inches of water that had seeped into the basement. I was never able to find out precisely how he died: if he slipped and fell, if the cold drove him into some fatal infection, if a stray wire electrified the water. It is enough to say that George Creel is dead, and Any Four Words mourns his loss. I would have attended the wake, but due to the condition of the body and the state of his family’s finances, no wake was held.
We include below some brief memorials dedicated to a man who helped make the site what it was. I never met him in person all that often, but he was a prickly sort, often given to arguments with himself and others. His rants were incoherent and wildly entertaining, but once he sat down to set his arguments to paper, he became a cooler and more reasonable man, one who was not quite so entertaining but who was still willing to take the facts and ideas of history as far as his mind would allow him. He had always wanted to write a biography of St. Anselm, even if he thought it wasn’t possible to write a good one, and on his desk was found the sketchy notes for an article on Neville Chamberlain. He will be missed.
Any Four Words will not be the same without him. Therefore, in this time of grieving, I have decided to place the site on indefinite hiatus. It may take a number of months, but we will need the time to collect ourselves, reevaluate our efforts, and come to a decision about the final worth of our minor endeavor. If, in the face of untimely death, we find our efforts to be meaningless, we will abandon the site for better prospects. If, however, we decide to soldier on, you will find in good time a different Any Four Words, one which has hopefully learned from its experience. It is what we owe to Mr. Creel. It is what we owe to you.
Barely remembering George Creel - Anthony Rossetti