On Tuesday, July 30th, I saw a notification pop up on one of my favorite YouTube channels. It was a short 1-minute video titled “Grant Thompson, in Memoriam.” The video was simply a picture of Grant Thompson, aka “The King Of Random” with no sound. Underneath in the description was the following text.

“It is with great sadness to inform everyone that Grant Thompson passed away last night. Grant had great love and appreciation for his fans. We invite you to share your thoughts for Grant and the channel in the comments. Please do a random act of love or kindness today in honor of The King of Random. Grant’s legacy will live on in the channel and the global community he created.”

This news hit me unexpectedly hard. Sure I liked his channel, and have watched it a lot with my two sons, but I did not know the guy, had no personal contact with him. So when I thought about it some more, I realized it was because of his age and his family. He was only 38 years old, had a wife and 4 young kids. I am just 2 years older than him, so I think it hit home pretty hard.

This made me start thinking about his legacy.