By Maria Moss

It is with great sor­row that we announce the pass­ing of Bob­bie Kirkhart. Not only has she been my won­der­ful friend of 35 years, she’s also been one of our most faith­ful con­trib­u­tors, writ­ing on polit­i­cal top­ics (“We were Trumped” and “The Long March to Jus­tice”), often inter­weav­ing her polit­i­cal insights with per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions (“Mem­o­ries of Gov­ern­ment Springs Park”). She also com­ment­ed on top­ics of cul­tur­al rel­e­vance, such as on soc­cer star Megan Rapi­noe, (“Yay! Peo­ple love her!” or on only ‘old white men’ being nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award (“The Oscars – Not in Col­or this Year”). Bob­bie, an avid movie­go­er, also loved to review films she felt strong­ly about (“BlacK­kKlans­man: A Much too Amer­i­can Sto­ry” or “When the News was True: The Post”). All in all, we could always rely on her to tell it like it is, whether sprin­kled with a dose of humor or a pinch of sarcasm.

Bob­bie sent her last blog on Mon­day, Oct. 25, “A Gov­ern­ment of, for, and by the peo­ple?” and it appeared two days lat­er – the day she died.

Bob­bie was a past pres­i­dent of Athe­ist Alliance Inter­na­tion­al and a founder of the Sec­u­lar Coali­tion of Amer­i­ca. This is all the more sur­pris­ing as she liked to write about reli­gion and reli­gious top­ics or on patri­ot­ic Amer­i­can songs and hymns, like in her great blog “We sing America.”

We’ll miss you, Bobbie.