22 Apr A Personal Eulogy for Charles De Kunffy from Paul Belasik

It was with a real sense of loss that I learned about Charles De Kunffy’s passing. It is a limited thing, dressage; a meditation, a discipline, an art form. To understand how to do it correctly and ethically, you need guides.

Like a sailor who at first sees a whole constellation of light and stars, you learn that certain ones prove to work in guiding you. If nothing less, to pinpoint where you are and in which direction you need to go to get where you want to be. If you follow the wrong stars, your ship can end up on the rocks.

Today many riders seem bored by constancy. The harder science of an astronomy of dressage is getting confused with some kind of astrology of dressage. Charles De Kunffy was a constant light in the sky, one of the lights you could rely on.

I did not know Charles as well as many other people, but I knew all his work, and several important times in my own career I consulted him. He was always gracious, asked nothing in return. Like a sailor, I didn’t need this guidance every day but when you feel you might be getting lost or you need help in a direction you need these stars very much. It’s not an exaggeration that your life can depend on them.

Now one of these lights is gone. Every time we lose one of these lights it becomes a little harder to navigate in at times an unforgiving sea. A great and generous gift he left us with are some maps from his own journeys, which was an amazing story in itself. He did all he could – now it is up to us to remember to use them.