If one is fortunate, he or she will have multiple mentors throughout a career given over to meaningful work. Mary Klaasen, who once owned a Logos Bookstore in the French Quarter of New Orleans and who later invited me to serve (at a very young age) on the Association of Logos Bookstores’ board of directors, was my first professional mentor. She spoke into my life and a vocational discernment process at two critical junctures that led me in directions I would not have imagined on my own, and I have always been grateful. I was saddened to learn of Mary’s death on November 30. I was to have had coffee with her in Dallas this past April. Sadly, that trip was cancelled due to the pandemic. When I wrote to tell her my trip was off, she said, “Promise me when you can travel I will be on your itinerary.” I promised her she would be. My friends Becky Gorczyca, Rick and Susan Lewis, Jay Weygandt, Cindy Crosby and and many others from Logos Bookstores will remember Mary. She shared much in common with my friend Steve Garber and spoke “visions of vocation” to me years before Garber put that vision into powerful words through his IVP book of the same title. I light a candle today in Mary’s memory, and give thanks for her impact on my life. Her passing and my memory of all she taught me serve as a reminder and a challenge to invest in others’ vocational journeys, where possible.
—Jeff Crosby