As Time Races Forward, We Remember Walt: Six Years of Legacy, Love, and the Unwavering Effort to Be Like Him
June 6, 2025, will be here in 12 days, and thousands will wonder how time has moved so quickly. A week from Friday will mark six years since he’s been gone, and over those six years they have done their best to Be Like Walt.
For some, the memory of that day feels like it happened yesterday. For others, it feels like a chapter from another life entirely—one they still can’t fully believe was ever written. But whether it feels like six years or six minutes, the absence is real. It is in the air on days like June 6, when stories come back in a rush, uninvited but welcome. It’s in the laughter that turns into silence at the end of a shared memory. It’s in the moments when someone walks into a room expecting to see him, still, even now.
Walt wasn’t just a man who touched lives—he transformed them. He didn’t do it with grandeur or spectacle. He didn’t seek credit. He didn’t need attention. What he gave to the world was simple and powerful: kindness, consistency, integrity, and presence. When he was with you, he was with you fully. That presence left an imprint deeper than most ever manage to make in a lifetime twice as long.
The legacy of someone like Walt doesn’t rest in grand memorials or carved stone; it lives in action. It’s in the little decisions people make every day because of how he taught them to live. Over these six years, many have taken up the quiet mission of living in a way that would make him proud. They call it “Be Like Walt,” but it’s more than a phrase. It’s a code. A compass. A standard.
Be like Walt means stepping up when no one else will. It means being the steady voice in a chaotic room. It means listening before speaking, and meaning every word when you finally do speak. It means choosing honesty, even when it’s hard. It means seeing people—really seeing them—not as what they offer, but as who they are.
There are stories. So many stories. Ask around and you’ll hear them. The kid Walt coached in Little League who went on to coach his own team with the same patient words Walt once gave him. The neighbor who remembers Walt stopping by during a snowstorm, shovel in hand, before anyone even thought to ask for help. The former student who says Walt saw something in him when no one else did—and because of that, he stayed in school. Became something.
Six years is a long time, and it’s not. Time doesn’t move in straight lines when you’re grieving. It loops and folds. Some days, it feels like you’re back at the beginning, your breath knocked out of your lungs all over again. Other days, it feels like you’ve come far, like you’re living proof of what he built. That’s the complicated beauty of carrying someone’s legacy: you carry both the ache of their absence and the strength they left behind.
There have been moments over the past six years that would have made Walt smile. Not because they were big or flashy, but because they were good and real and right. A former student got clean and stayed that way. A single mom got through a rough patch because someone showed up the way Walt used to. A team of kids played their hearts out—not just to win, but to do it the right way.
Each of those moments is a thread in the fabric of his legacy. Together, they form something unbreakable. Something that says: he mattered. He still matters.
And maybe that’s the thing about time. It doesn’t just carry us away from those we’ve lost—it also carries forward what they gave us. It teaches us to look for the echoes, to find them in the quiet, in the decisions we make, in the ways we show up for each other.
Some people try to measure a life in years or accomplishments. But for Walt, the measure was always people. How they felt in his presence. What they learned from his example. What they still carry because of him.
Six years ago, the world felt colder without him in it. And in some ways, it still does. But the warmth he gave didn’t disappear—it multiplied. It took root. It lives on in classrooms and ball fields, in family dinners and long drives, in quiet acts of kindness and courage.
Those who knew him, who loved him, don’t gather just to mourn. They gather to remember. To recommit. To say out loud that his way—the Walt way—is still the best way.
June 6 will come again, as it does every year. There will be flowers and maybe a few tears. There will be stories told and memories shared. There will be laughter, too, because Walt wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
And after the remembering comes the living. The choosing, every day, to Be Like Walt. Not to fill the space he left—because no one can—but to honor it. To make it matter.
What does it mean, really, to Be Like Walt? It means seeing someone struggling and sitting down beside them. It means taking responsibility when it’s easier to walk away. It means believing in someone even when they’ve stopped believing in themselves. It means being a lighthouse when others are lost at sea.
The world doesn’t always reward that kind of living. It’s louder for the flashy, the fast, the fleeting. But Walt was never after rewards. He was after what lasts. And what lasts is love.
Love in the way he coached and taught and led. Love in the way he listened and advised and protected. Love in the way he gave his time freely, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Because for him, it was.
The people who loved Walt, and still do, understand this: you don’t move on from someone like that. You move forward with them. You carry their voice in your head and their lessons in your bones. You let their example shape you, even now, especially now.
So as June 6 approaches, there’s no need to pretend the ache is gone. It’s okay that it still hurts. That’s what happens when someone matters that much. But if there’s one thing Walt would want more than anything, it’s this: keep going. Keep choosing good. Keep being the person who shows up, who tries hard, who makes it better.
Keep being someone others can count on. Someone others can believe in. Someone who makes the world feel safer, steadier, kinder.
Keep being like Walt.
