“ Thank you so much for your very nice visit today. I was not prepared for what happened and am quite flattered that you all took the time to come and honor me in this way. I am very proud to be an Honorary Member of the club and hope to be able to live up to your recognition by helping the club with future activities.”
John Brady
CVMC welcomes Smith College professor as its newest honorary member.
On Tuesday April 2nd, 2019 a small contingent of club members and officers went to Smith College for an impromptu visit to honor one of its professors, John Brady.
John is the head of the geology department and is no stranger to CVMC members. He has hosted many Club trips to the Smith College geology department for classes on mineral identification and has done all manner of minerals testing for Club members. All of John's assistance was always done free of charge, out the goodness of his heart, and in the name of science and furthering people's interest and knowledge in geology.
This visit was arranged by Club member Andrew Brodeur and done under the guise of a solo visit so the presentation could be a surprise. As far as John knew, Andrew wanted to stop by with a few mineral questions.
John Brady was actually voted in as an honorary member about 2 years ago but we could never get the timing right for him to come to any club function to make an official presentation. Well since we couldn't get Mohammad to come to the mountain, we brought the mountain to Mohammad!! The members assembled at Smith at the prescribed time and made their way to the science building and John's office. As the group made their way into John's small office it was obvious to him that something more than a few mineral questions was on the agenda. Seeing that we needed a bigger room, John suggested we move to one of the geology labs where we had more room. Once we were all assembled in the lab he asked, “what's up?” After coming clean with why we were there instead of just me , we made our presentation to John and it was nice to finally get to give him an official “Thank You” for all he's done for the Club. As someone who has accessed John's knowledge on more than one occasion, been part of 2 Club trips to his mineral identification lab, and has been invited to attend one of his college trips into the field, it was high time he received honor and acknowledgement for all his effort. We were all honored in our own way to be associated with him and even in a few minutes that was supposed to be all his he still found the time to give us something. He was happy unveil to us his latest project and show us what an incredible learning tool he's built. John has written an on-line interactive geology text book that has been his pet project for the last 4 years and will be wheeled out this year at the Annual meeting of the Mineralogical Society of America (MSA) and available to MSA members. Even with John's upcoming retirement in June he will continue to be associated with Smith College and continue to be an asset to the Club and host more field trips for our members.
We all thank you, for all you do John, you rock!
Report by: Andrew Brodeur