David disappeared 10 years ago this past Sunday, but what has happened in the decade since is a journey that can be documented. It?s extraordinary, but it happened all the same. It?s still happening, in a way. It was pretty well summed up this week by David?s father, retired UW-Madison philosophy professor Mike Byrd, who said: “One way of confronting this is to expand who you love.” Mike and his wife, Maggie Felker ? a Madison nurse and David?s mother ? have embraced the country where their son spent his final months….For his part, Mike felt the need to retire from his UW-Madison position and find something “intensely meaningful.” There is something profound in how he, and Maggie, too, found it at the center in Quito. “It’s a place of hope,” Mike said. “It radiates out to everybody.”
Office of Strategic Communication