A longtime champion of homeschooling rights around the globe, Home School Legal Defense Association Senior Counsel and Director of State and International Relations Christopher J. Klicka passed away on October 12, 2009, at age 48, following a 15-year battle with multiple sclerosis.   The very first representative of HSLDA whom we heard after we made the decision to begin formal homeschooling was Klicka at the 1997 Ohio Home Educators Conference in Columbus, OH, sponsored by Christian Home Educators of Ohio.  An attorney, spokesman, lobbyist, and homeschooling husband and father, Chris is survived by his wife, Tracy, their seven children (ages 11-21), and his parents, Ardath and George Klicka. An integral part of Home School Legal Defense Association's staff for 24 years, Chris was HSLDA's first full-time employee, first executive director, and first full-time attorney. He believed passionately that homeschooling was the best educational method for children and demonstrated that passion in every area of his life. 

     His wife Tracy wrote, "I know to try and describe our sadness--the longing and aching in our hearts right now--would be impossible, so I won't try. I will share a picture the Lord gave within minutes after Chris' departure.  I saw him with his old western boots and jeans on (like he used to wear at Grove City College when he would run over to see me at my dorm--he was a senior and I was a freshman when we met there), running at top speed in Heaven. I pictured a huge smile (the one I love best) on his face and fellow saints yelling out greetings of welcome to him, some even asking him to stop and visit with them, and heard his reply, 'I've got to run for the Lord up here. I'm making up for lost time down on Earth. I'm praising God and have to use my legs to do it. Stop me in about 100 years, and we'll sit down and have a nice long visit!'" 

     HSLDA President J. Michael Smith said, “Chris was both a people person and a goal person. He cared deeply about people, but was also driven to always do more!  He was the most determined person I ever met in my life. Even with all the things he accomplished every day at HSLDA, he continually wanted to tackle new challenges and serve homeschoolers in more and better ways. He was so focused on the homeschooling world, but he was also very much focused on his family and dedicated to raising his children.” 

     And Dr. John A. Sparks, Dean of the Calderwood School of Arts & Letters, at Grove City College in Grove City, PA, made the following remarks.  "A young dark-haired student, Chris Klicka, sat in my U.S. Constitutional History class at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania around 1980. He was an excellent student with a particularly keen interest in questions about religious liberty and how that liberty might be protected. What I did not know at the time was that he would become the untiring legal defender of fathers and mothers across this nation, many of them Christians, who wanted to school their children at home. His death is an immeasurable loss to that alternative schooling movement which has grown wider and deeper than he ever expected.   Chris Klicka studied law after his Grove City College years at O.W. Coburn School of Law in Oklahoma and was hired in 1985 as the first executive director of an organization that had been formed by another tenacious fighter for educational and religious freedom, Mr. Michael Farris. His new position was with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The organization charged a reasonable annual fee to parents who were home schooling. The pooled fees were used to provide a legal defense fund for those who located in states in which laws and courts were hostile to the efforts of parents whose only 'transgression' was that they had chosen to home-educate their children....In the early 1980s, Pennsylvania was called by HSLDA one of the 'worst states' in the country for home schoolers. Many of the threatened moms and dads in Western Pennsylvania were clients of mine. Consequently, though we had not planned it, Chris Klicka and I had the 'pleasure' of working together with Mike Farris on a number of cases here on behalf of HSLDA families, where school districts, through their superintendents, sought to criminally prosecute parents who were home schooling....All this, I add, he accomplished while fighting an individual battle with Multiple Sclerosis. In these last years that disease sapped his physical strength and challenged his endurance. Nevertheless, his indomitable spirit, which was clearly Christ working through him, made him a warrior for freedom to the end. His gentle demeanor, disarming smile, and courageous heart were combined in a winsome way with his unyielding stance for scriptural principles. He died with the gratifying knowledge that parents across the land could instruct their children without fearing the heavy hand of state intervention. Now he rests peacefully in the bosom of the Lord he served so well."