BY TIM GOODWIN

‘He stood six feet eight inches tall andhe was dressed in a T-shirt with aslogan on it and his name was Dirk

and he loomed over me to ask if I had afew minutes to talk about public accessTV. Sure. Hell, yes. As soon as my pulserate returned to normal. As soon as Icould stop wondering whether I’d get tokeep my credit cards. Actually, once I real-ized he did not intend to carve a zodiacalsign on my abdomen with the rusted edgeof an Indiana license plate, I sort of wel-comed his company.”

So began Pulitzer Prize-winningmedia critic Ron Powers in his July 1986column in GQ magazine following theannual meeting of the National CableTelevision Association in Dallas. Of all the13,148 “bust-my-buttons bidnisspeople”there, he found Dirk’s rap on communitymedia the most compelling.

Dirk Koning was a big man! “Five-foot-twenty” he often would tell peoplewho invariably asked. Overseashe would

answer “two-meters plus.” Height was hismost obvious feature, and it served himand the community media mission well.Inevitably, it found its way into scores ofarticles (this one no exception) and inmost of the eulogies that followed hisdeath February 10, 2005 from an often-done heart procedure gone fatally wrong.

Physically big that he was, Dirk wasabsolutely huge in our movement. Hewas, I would tell him, the best thing I everdid for community media, an honor I hadas founding chair of the Grand RapidsCommunity Media Center when we hiredhim as executive director in 1981. It was achoice between public access televisionor the U.S. Peace Corps for him. HiringDirk was also one of the best things I everdid for myself. We became best of friends,soul mates, and fellow travelers along thispath of democratic communications andfree speech. Then as now, it was all aboutthe mission, this philosophy of buildingcommunity through media.

“Every man a king, Huey Longonce said,” Powers concluded inthat 1986 column. “Access televisionis beginning to promise that everyman can at least be a Ted Turner.Or a Dirk Koning. Eat your heartout Dallas. The hour of GrandRapids approacheth.”

Dirk defined the very mean-ing of community media. Themedium was never the mes-sage. It was never just televi-sion. Never just radio. Neverjust the internet. It was allthose things and more.These were just tools to

Dirk. He was, he said, a “communityorganizer, around the use of media toshare information.” Maybe you’d expectno less from this son of a missionary whobegan life on a Zuni Indian reservation inNew Mexico.

Dirk understood early where the tech-nology was heading. “It seemed to mesuch a natural evolution—convergence ofall information into digital transmission,”he said, “Voice, video and data would notnecessarily be independent worlds anylonger, either in the media or the meth-ods.” And then he set out to make it so atthe Grand Rapids Community MediaCenter, which today exemplifies the com-munity media center model with its pub-lic access television, FM radio station,nonprofit internet service provider, com-puter access, and media literacy institute.Dirk saw long-term survival in providingall things media to the community, andhe had a knack for keeping his eyes on theprize.

“We have an old fashioned co-op witha new tech twist,“ he told me. “There’s asound bite for you!”

And Dirk is largely the reason you’rereading COMMUNITY MEDIA REVIEW rightnow. For many years, up until his death,he was chair of the CMR Editorial Board.His byline appears in CMR more oftenthan anyone else. He was guest editor-in-chief more often than anyone else. Duringsome tenuous times for the Alliance [thenNFLCP], he managed to rescue CMR[then CTR] from obscurity. He prevailedon me to become managing editor in theearly 1990s, and again when I returnedfrom Russia and the Peace Corps in 1997.

Remembering Dirk Koning 1957-2005

A souvenir Polaroid from the 1986 NCTA convention.

8CCMMRR

The world’s biggest executive director in the world’s smallest office asAmsterdam’s Ruud deBruin remembers him.

CCMMRR9

theater from a struggling nonprofit. But it justwasn’t to be. A procedure to correct a condi-tion of atrial fibrillation went awry, and Dirkbecame a one in a thousand statistic.

We mourn our loss. As City of GrandRapids Mayor George Heartwell paraphrasedWendell Berry in his eulogy to him, “Dirk, weare you, inheritors of what we mourn. Youhave, indeed, given us a rich inheritance. MayGod make us worthy to walk in your way,strong to stand against resistance, andunflinching in our commitment to justice.”Tim Goodwin [goodwin@usxc.net] is managing edi-tor of COMMUNITY MEDIA REVIEW and founding chair ofthe Community Media Center in Grand Rapids,Michigan.

Neither of us could refuse the other.He was huge too in the hearts and

minds of those who knew him, and hisdeath has left a bigger void in our spiritsthan his physical presence ever did in ourmaterial lives. To know Dirk was to be hisfriend, as I, and many of you in thismovement, had the great joy to know.

Dirk was a citizen of the world with akeen sense of justice, not unlike his per-sonal hero, Albert Einstein, whom headmired as much or more for his human-ity as for his science. Dirk carried thisseed of liberty we call community mediato far corners of our planet, from SouthKorea to South Africa to South America,Europe and hundred stops in between,maybe one of them in your own back-yard. To Dirk, these were seeds of peaceand understanding. To understand eachother was the first step to respecting eachother, a prelude to peace, whether it wasneighborhoods or nations. He used thetools at his command and his own uniquepresence and gift for story telling to makethe case. The world is richer for it.

So it was no surprise that peoplecame to his memorial services from threecontinents and from across the UnitedStates on Valentine’s Day 2005. It was ameasure of the respect and love in whichhis peers held him. You just didn’t expectdeath from someone as serendipitous asDirk Koning, though.

At the time of his death, he and hiswife Ginger were considering their nextmoves in life. Wherever it might have led,it never would have been too far fromcommunity media. The future seemedbright. 2007 was to be that seminal year.The kids, Shaun, 20, and Kelly, 16, bothwould be in college. Another capital cam-paign would be completed, this time foryet another expression of community inthe rescue of an historic neighborhood

Peace pole meditation along the banks of the Jordan River at Riparia innorthern Michigan.

Above, on theshore of the southAtlantic Oceannear Capetown,South Africa.

At home on Big Crooked Lake in northern Kent County, Michigan.

Above right, pepstep and brew onthe north Atlanticcoast of theNetherlands.