Sharon - dear Sharon
do you remember that burning plane we sat in on the way from Miami to Tegucigalpa?
How we all thought that these might be the last minutes of our lives?
And how lucky  we felt that at least the plane would not crash into the cement desert of New York , that it would fall into the lush green treetops of Yucatan's jungle ?
How we stayed alive after all, emergency-landed at a make shift airport next to a fishing village called Cancun?
How worried you were about that little baby in your womb, that it might have been affected by all that fear and stress?

One week before  this scary flight we had asked you to be our interpreter in Honduras, a difficult country to film in. On the phone you had agreed immediately but not said a word about expecting a baby.

The first I knew about it was in Miami airport where we met up. You saw my astonishment  as you approached like a galleon under full sail .

Before I said a word you laughed defiantly : " Oh, by the way, did I tell you I was pregnant? Only five months! "

The happiness in my heart did not silence alarm bells ringing in my head. This trip could be dangerous, too dangerous for a pregnant woman. You should not come along. You should fly back home.

But there was your face. Your eyes looking at me. Determined. Pleading. 

How could I say to you that you should return home, sit in the safety of your sofa and cradle your belly instead of coming along on this exciting trip? 

Of course you had been silent on the phone about the baby. You'd been afraid that we might cancel. So you just came, confronting us with this big belly and your confident eyes. You wanted to do this job so badly.  
Well, like times before, we added your bags to ours and started the journey together.
Shortly after take-off the plane started to burn. It seemed a terrible omen.

Vengeance of a goddess of fertility ? Or the wrath of male gods trying to put us uppity women in our place?  

But technology won the day and after the emergency landing we were dazed with happiness - we were alive. And the baby would be fine. 
And as we all know, the baby, lovely Kalisa Galina, was not harmed in any way by your daring. 

This episode is the one which always comes to my mind first when I think of you.  May be it contains the central drive of your life:  Doing it All, Having it All.  Education, Work, Love, Adventure and most preciously : A CHILD TOO. 

You did do it all, you enjoyed it all. Your's was a fulfilled life because you filled it. With many glorious thoughts and deeds. They will live on in all of us who have known you while your molecules will be busy dancing about in the oceans starting all over again.  Thank you, Sharon, for having been. 

Gina Kalla, London

It wasn’t my intention to be enrolled in Dr. Meyers's ALI 274 two semesters ago. As a PhD student in chemical engineering, it wasn’t easy for me to spare enough time for an English class which neither me nor my advisor though I needed. That is how I met Dr. Meyer in her ALI 274 class, by accident.

After I explained my situation to her, she smiled softly and told me, "You will find this class worth your time". At that time, I didn’t know that I will feel it priceless later. In her class, she always tried everything she could to correct my accent and explained the pronunciations in all possible details. That's how I realized how to speak English fluently and moreover, how to communicate in this language with emotion and understanding others.

I used to have many casual conversations with Dr Meyers before class. She talked about her life in Texas Tech and I talked about mine in Ohio State. That's how I know her life and start to look back on my own. I don't know her life too much considering that one semester is a pretty short period of time; however, the important point is that I started to figure out my own life in retrospect in her words and stories.

Words are always way too shallow to say one's deep love, especially for a foreign engineering PhD student like me. Sometimes, life in pain can be so long that we almost want an end to it; other times, life in retrospect can be so short that people aren't even exactly sure whether we ever lived in this world many years after our death. It's so sad to say one's life is just like a blink of starlight in the night sky. But that's really how lives and souls like Dr. Meyers can inspire and remind us of the truth of a meaningful life by helping others whole-heartedly.

May you rest in peace, Dr. Meyers. I will always remember you as one of the best teachers I'd ever met in my life.