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Griffin John Namin, 21, passed away after a long battle with brain cancer on June 26th. He was an upstart political figure in Connecticut politics, one of the younger operatives in the state’s GOP infrastructure. Widely known in the town of Southbury for his charm, political insight, and civic enthusiasm, Griffin was something of a throwback, an honest broker who said what he thought without equivocation. While he was undergoing treatment for brain cancer, Griffin managed to work for two Republican gubernatorial campaigns, one in the primary season, the other in the general election. He received letters from the late John McCain, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and other national figures wishing him well as he battled with his awful disease. He fought to the end. He ran the race with integrity. His death leaves a gaping hole in the state of Connecticut, the town of Southbury, and — most profoundly — the hearts of his family.


Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “Sorrow makes us all children again — destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” So it is — there are few words to say, few condolences to offer, few pithy refrains that can do anything but distantly reverberate down the walls of that bottomless pit of grief, approaching the bereaved as but an echo, hollowed of meaning, more often gestural than substantive. There is little that can assuage a family’s unbearable sorrow, little that a distant party can do to blunt the abiding pain, so I resign myself to that distinctly Johannine observation of the Evangelist recording our Lord before the tomb of Lazarus: “Jesus wept.”


We all weep for Griffin Namin. May God rest his soul.