Ben Moorad

The first time I met Julie was in the early days of Write Around Portland. My Co-Founder Liza Halley and I had an informational meeting with Julie and with Miriam Feuerle, and we thought this meeting was to see how we might partner with Caldera and to see who else they thought we should connect with. After we explained what we were up to, Julie said, “Goddammit,” and left the room. She came back in with her checkbook, muttered something like, “I wasn’t going to write any fucking checks today…” and handed us the biggest individual donation we’d ever received.

In the years since then, Julie has always believed in me and supported me, professionally and artistically, no matter what I was up to… even when it was weird. During a fundraiser she was putting on, she once cajoled a bunch of people to crowd into a side room to see me perform a new poem about fire that was 15 pages of iambic tetrameter. (The poem killed, but who does that?)

Any time I’ve launched a new project or started doing a new sort of work, she was there to cheer me on and connect me with other people who she thought should get on board. And if they didn’t get on board, she’d shrug, send a “Vaffunculo!” their way and tell me to keep going and keep doing what I want to be doing. If you’ve got one or two people like that out there, that can be enough to keep you going through some dark times.

She always believed in me, and she always cared about me as a person. She wanted me to do well, to be happy and to have a good life. She was an amazing cheerleader, patron and friend, and I miss her like hell already.