Vince Cianciolo came into my orbit when he volunteered to help put on our first Garden Party at Ijams Nature Center last year. He secured raffle donations, booked our student jazz band, handled the logistics that made the event a success — all despite knowing he wouldn't be able to attend due to travel. That said a lot to me about Vince. Not many help plan a party they can't attend. He holds a PhD in physics from MIT and spent years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. These are the credentials of an incredibly impressive individual. And yet he remains humble and generous. He's just doing the work.
Since then, he keeps appearing wherever something meaningful is happening. He conceived of our outing last weekend to bike the proposed Enbridge pipeline corridor (now under construction) and led riders from Cummins Falls to the Kingston Fossil Plant, covering a good stretch of our 100 mile journey himself. Maureen, his wife, served as our primary safety driver for the relay, a crucial part of keeping a long-distance outing like this safe. They've also opened their home for the Harvey Broome Group's fall picnic, and Vince has been writing for the TennesSierran and speaking at events like Stand Up for Science in Knoxville.
As if that’s not enough I met Vince outside the capitol at the beginning of the May when he drove to Nashville with Kent Minault to watch the redistricting session. During this session, Memphis was carved into three congressional districts, effectively dismantling the only majority Black district and the last Democratic congressional seat in Tennessee. Vince and Kent walked to the capitol along Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard and John Lewis Way before it started. He sat through the whole session, took notes, and wrote about what he saw without softening the edges. That piece is worth your time. Read it here.
One personal note, connections between us keep popping up. Vince and I attended the University of Michigan, separated by a few years. He spent a good deal of time at Brookhaven National Laboratory, just miles from the community I lived prior to Tennessee. And we grew up about a mile and a half from each other in the Detroit suburbs. (Our Conservation Chair JoAnn McIntosh's husband Doug grew up within a mile of my childhood home as well. Wild!) It's either a very small world or people like Vince simply lead very big lives. Probably both.
Vince also had a great technique for heating Maureen's delicious breakfast hash over a campfire. Vince, always humble, credits his kids days as scouts on that one.