The Room that Made Me
Aaron Ross Powell
October 18, 2024
Locations are formative, and no single room has been more formative of me, both intellectually and in where my life has ended up today, than this office.
Of course, until a friend sent me this picture a few days ago, I’d never seen it like this. In fact, I’d never seen the surface of that desk before. When I spent time there, the office overflowed with books, magazines, newspapers, and documents. It was a library at best as an emergent order, but an order that made sense to only one man. The office was the working home of David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute.
David died this summer. I was with him in his final days. But there’s something about seeing his office cleaned out and ready for reoccupation (though it’s difficult to imagine worthy of its history) that feels final in a new way. [Update: A friend told me the plan is to turn the room in a library and meeting space, and display David’s works. Which is perfect, and I’m grateful to the Cato Institute for this thoughtful gesture.]
For years, that office was a second home to me. I don’t know how to count the hours I spent in there, in one of those two seats across the desk, but those hours added up, in a very real way, to who I am. Conversations with David–about politics, yes, but also philosophy and culture and movies and literature and life–shaped me, and continue to shape me.
In the tribute I wrote to him in July while he still clung to life, and while I helped with his hospice care, I said this of my time spent in that office:
It was in these conversations that David moved from a boss to mentor to cherished friend. Everyone at Cato was a little scared of David, even while they also loved him, because we knew not just that Cato existed in his image, but because he set the standards higher than anyone else, and knew all of us were capable of meeting them. (He could also spot a typo with superhuman perception.) But as staff writer, those lucky few of us who held the role over the years came to understand David as a deeply humble and humane man. In retrospect, it is obvious he’d be that way, because you don’t fight to give everyone, everywhere the opportunity for self-authorship and equal dignity if you don’t care, profoundly, about humanity.
David taught me to be a better advocate for the ideas that matter so much to both of us. And he gave me the career that has been so much better than I ever could’ve imagined. But he also made me a better man through our friendship, and conversations, and his example of taking one’s principles seriously.
Seeing the office as it is now means it really is over. What an extraordinary place.
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