01/04/2017
Carmen has something to say about our David Bunnell
This post is long overdue. 10/18/16, you left for a better place. I didn't receive the news until last month; it was three days after the election. I cried more than when I heard the election results, because in a world filled with violence and hate, I had forgotten love.
Three years ago, I was awarded the Andrew Fluegelman Foundation Award: a MacBook Pro computer. The Founder, David Bunnell, read my application essay. Throughout high school, I completed my assignments on an old desktop or at the public library. After getting into Berkeley, I was worried because I couldn't afford a laptop. David and the Fluegelman Foundation not only gave me the technology I needed to succeed in college, but they became valuable mentors. David checked in with us regularly, invited scholars to fundraising events with leaders in tech, and even his holiday parties. I remember him and his wife Jackie not letting me leave the party until I had taken 2/3rds of the leftovers home in Tupperware containers. Never have I known anyone so kindhearted and so caring of Oakland's youth. To change an aspiring student's life, sometimes it's not about the zeroes on a check. When I was struggling my first semester at Cal, I voiced my concerns I would become yet another statistic -- a statistic of the neighborhood I saw through the bars on my bedroom window of victims of hate crimes, gentrification, and a society that favors those with more than less. David believed in me. He alway did. As I write this post on my MacBook, I wish I could've said goodbye in person. Thank you, David. Rest in paradise.
Carmen K. Zheng-UC Berkeley Student and Fellow Recipient