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AT: Just kind of on the same topic, if anyone has any insight to this, I'm not sure, but did Kip ever talk about his family's experience in Minidoka and how maybe that led to his activism that he engaged in, especially with this Civil Liberties Public Education Act? If not, that's completely okay.

BL: I'll speak up about this. Yeah, definitely. He was very much impacted by not only his parents' incarceration, but the birth of his older brother who was born developmentally disabled. His older brother, Buji, I think about maybe a year and a half older than Kip, needed care his entire life. He was such a special part of the family. And this kind of ties into some of Kip's feistiness, I think, because growing up, Buji was made fun of a lot and picked on, and Kip was always there to defend him, and really, throughout his life there to take care of him. So I think it's a combination of what his parents went through, which, of course, like so many of you, didn't know any of these stories until decades later because our parents would not talk about it. And so, the more and more that he learned, the more he became committed to, a) doing what he could to make sure that this would not happen again, constitutionally, and also to release support towards our parents who were incarcerated, who had lived with the burden and the pain of what had happened to them. That's all.

AT: Thank you.

STS: I also wanted to add a little bit, because I think... and I appreciate so much what Barb just said, because one of the things that made Kip such an effective legislator is that, as I said earlier, people loved him, people gravitated to him. He was, he was beloved by not just my caucus, the Democratic caucus, he was beloved in the Republican caucus. He was as much a deeply cherished, feminist friend to the women of the legislature as much as he was a man's man for the men in the legislature. And believe me, that is still a very male sort of oriented institution, a male dominated institution. And Kip, I think because he was so beloved, and he -- it was just a natural part of his personality, to help educate people, when he started sharing his family story to the legislators with whom he worked, they began to understand where his passions originated, why was he so committed to lifting up the underdog? It was because of his family's experience, it was because of what he saw happening to his brother. It's why he cared so deeply about children who were vulnerable. And the thing that was, I think, endearing -- and I am going to use that word -- to both the men and the women of the legislators was when this person, who everyone not only liked but respected, they deepened their respect for him because he made himself vulnerable by sharing the truth about what happened to him and his family. And so, when he talked about what happened to his family, when he talked about the conditions that were not made available to his family, his parents and his brother, the other legislators could understand in a much deeper way, why this was wrong and why shouldn't Kip, who was as red, white and blue as any of them, why should his family have had to suffer the consequences? And so I think that that was part of his effectiveness is by not browbeating people or standing on the moral ground, although he could do that, but he always did that in a very effective way. But he shared his vulnerability and his story in such a way that other legislators could relate. And because they considered Kip his friend, they didn't want to let their friend down.

AT: Thank you very much for that insight. It's very interesting to see how that works within legislation and how him being such a friend to everybody was so impactful in his activism as well.

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