03/03/2023
It’s hard to express a sentiment about Samantha Whitney that hasn’t already been said.
I met her in 2021, a lot later than most. It was her first shift at our job and I was to show her the ropes a bit. She was immediately better than me, because she was a powerhouse in everything she did in life. She immediately became one of my best friends.
For those who know me, you know that while I have a lot of love for everyone I know, there are very few people I truly trust. Sam pretty much instantly became one of those people. When she barely even knew me, she was there for me on one of the darkest and messiest nights of my life and made sure I was safe.
She was whip smart, and had the spiciest sense of humor, making jokes that nobody else would dare to make. She’d push pass the slow people in Times Square and when they’d yell at her she’d yell back “I don’t care, I can’t hear you, I’m deaf!”. When we were both exhausted and frustrated at work, she’d slap an XL size sticker on her head and make me do it too so we could both have a laugh. She was a chief gossiper, and there was nobody I loved talking s**t with more. She had a soft heart and everyone knows how much she loved animals, especially cats. She was also strong as hell. Whatever life threw in her way (and life threw A LOT more her way than just disability) she powered through. She fearlessly and unapologetically stood up for what she believed in always, when most people would be terrified to do so.
I’m not someone who romanticizes people when they pass away, something that’s gotten me in trouble over the years. I think the reputation people have in death is what they earned in life. With that I say: she was one of the best. The kindest, the most loving, the bravest. I cannot tell you how much I wish we would’ve had more time, how much I believed, still believe that she was capable of monumental things.
I hope those of us who knew her use her legacy to fight for one of her biggest goals: accessibility in theater. I truly believe that’s what she’d want. She was in so many ways a star in life, and now she’s a star in the sky.
