Kendrick Frazier, beloved editor of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER for the past forty-five years, passed away on November 7, 2022. A forthcoming issue of SI will be devoted to Ken’s life and legacy through the words of others. In this issue, Ken gifts all of us with a recounting of his legacy in his own words. As always, they were carefully and perfectly chosen. Less than two weeks before succumbing to his recent diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia, Ken emailed me from his hospital bed: “I am thinking of writing a special editor’s column this issue that’d be a narrative report on my sudden and grave medical diagnosis. I think readers should know and I’d love to have them hear from me.…[I’d] fill it out with our previous wonderful vacation. And I could make a few observations about the uncertainties of life and the continuing value of skepticism.”
The result is what opens this, the first issue of our forty-seventh year. What Ken humbly titled “A Personal Note to Readers” is so much more. It’s a love letter—to his readers, his family, his colleagues, and skepticism itself—and, ultimately, a goodbye.