Three things are certain.

There’s an oft-cited quote, “Two things are certain in life: death and taxes”. Many have made half-serious additions to that list including dirty dishes, data breaches, and the likelihood of having a penis drawn on one’s face if one passes out at a frat party.

My own addition concerns losing touch with people and later on googling to find out how they’re doing. Most of the time there’s happy news and you get to cheer. You see that people have moved on with their lives, had great careers, popped out a kid or two, and have done good things. You aren’t a part of their lives anymore but you can be happy for them, even the people you once found annoying.

Unfortunately, there’s that third certainty. Eventually you learn that someone you respected and cared for has died. Yesterday I learned that Gene Holden, who I knew from SLAC, passed away last year.

Gene was a maintenance mechanic, existing in a shadowy world of lift pumps, low conductivity water, cooling towers, and the occasional flow switch calibration. I never understood the entirety of her job any more than I paid attention to the duties of the other support or maintenance staff, an attitude I now regret.

I was a noodle-headed twenty-something when we met. I plowed through my duties at SPEAR and later on Main Control with determination and a liberal sprinkling of profanity, if not grace or skill. I always knew I could count on her to help when I called and address issues with competence, bluntness, and acerbic wit. Sometimes I’d get lucky and she’d tell stories, some of which I shouldn’t recount in public. In retrospect, I wish I’d prompted her for more.

She’d been in the Army in the early to mid ‘70s, the first female mechanic to work on COBRA helicopters in the field. “They always made the mechanics take the first ride after a repair,” she once told me with a mildly evil cackle. The message was clear: if you messed up the repair, you’d be the one killed rather than your fellow soldiers.

According to a story I only dimly remember, the spelling of her name led to a mixup. The Vietnam war was still sputtering along and she was deployed to a combat area, an area women, at the time, weren’t supposed to be sent to. I doubt she let that fact bother her, though. She was a strong person, determined and at times salty, good traits to have in both the Army and at SLAC.

One graveyard shift, when I was manning SPEAR, a young man decided to jump off highway 280, which runs across the linac and the klystron gallery. Some said his leap was driven by mental illness; others suggested that he was high on PCP.

Regardless of the cause, he landed behind the radiation fence and went on a bizarre, addled romp through the research yard. No one knew his intentions. I was on duty by myself, so I locked up the building and stayed away from windows. Others did likewise, hunkering down until the police could come and escort the fellow away.

Then there was Gene. She wasn’t much of a hunkering sort, I guess. She and one of the other maintenance mechanics tracked the fellow down, cornering him a men’s restroom. According to some versions of the story, he crouched down cowering in a corner, afraid of her. For some reason that delights me. She wasn’t a mean person, but she also wasn’t a person to be messed with.

After I left SLAC, I touched base with her a couple of times. She changed professions, earning her master’s degree and taking on various writing and training duties, still at SLAC.

I never had the guts to ask about her health, although it was always in the back of my mind. She’d once matter-of-factly mentioned an issue that she thought might spell her end someday. I’ll probably never know if that was what caused her death, but I’ll always wonder.

In my mind, she’ll always be young and healthy, cornering drug-addled young men in restrooms and demanding to know what the hell they were thinking when they jumped off bridges. She was a good one.

There’s a writeup about her in an old issue of SLAC Today. It’s well worth a read.

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