Laura and Jonathan could really use your help

Due to the sensitive nature of what Jonathan and Laura are experiencing, we respectfully ask anyone who encounters this fundraising campaign to share only via email and text - no social media shares, please.

Beloved and legendary theater-maker Jonathan Smoots is quickly approaching the end of his life due to a particularly aggressive pancreatic cancer, diagnosed only a few months ago. Courageous in his convictions and self-determining to his core, Jonathan has chosen to benefit from the State of Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act. Jonathan and Laura Gordon are currently in Portland awaiting the conclusion of the Act’s mandatory 14-day waiting period after which Jonathan can meet the end of his life on his own terms.

The day after their arrival in Portland, Jonathan and Laura’s longtime downstairs tenants discovered a new and emergent sewage backup in the basement of their 100-plus-year-old home; the original-to-the-house clay outlet pipe had collapsed, resulting in some large-scale and extremely costly emergency plumbing that—along with its expenses—is ongoing.

Anyone who knows Jonathan knows the tremendous degree of pride he takes in maintaining his and Laura’s home. And to say that this is the last thing Laura and Jonathan need to have on their minds at this impossible and unknowable moment in their lives would be a colossal understatement; to say that shouldering the expense of repairs alongside end-of-life expenses is extraordinarily financially taxing would be nearly as great of one.

Laura will return from Portland to her home without her husband. She will return to a home with a front yard (the landscaping of which was on Smoots’ summer projects list), destroyed by both excavators’ buckets and their tracks. She will return home to repair and cleanup and replacement and will do so without the person who has always been there to tackle it alongside her.

At last count, between the initial inspection, the replacement of the water line, and the excavation and replacement of the sewer line, the overall expenses were already nearing $15,000—to say nothing of repair to the yard and other cosmetic damage and cleanup.

None of us has the ability to change any of those things. But what we can do is cover as much of this expense as we can so that we may alleviate Jonathan’s stress and worries about the financial challenges he may leave behind him and create space for Laura to focus on mourning and celebrating her husband.

To know Jonathan and Laura is to have been touched by their kindness, generosity, and relentless willingness to engage, to connect, to help in whatever way they can. So many of us have been touched by that and our lives have measurably improved as a result. Now we’ve been presented with an opportunity to pay that back—and as quickly as we can, so that Jonathan may rest with the comfort of knowing that this problem has been solved.

Please do what you can to help give these remarkable humans that gift.