Ellen DeGeneres’ charity is honoring the life of Stephen “Twitch” Boss.
The Ellen Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda announced they were paying tribute to the late dancer and The Ellen DeGeneres Show co-executive producer by planting a tree in his honor.
“As we celebrated the one year anniversary of our Ellen Campus this past week, we took a moment to recognize a very special person who left us too soon,” read the caption of an Instagram post by the gorilla conservation fund on Monday.
In recognition of DeGeneres’ friendship with Boss, who died by suicide on Dec. 13 at age 40, the fund planted a tree beside a large plaque that reads: “In Memory of Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss and the light he brought to the world.”
“tWitch brought light to so many and was a wonderful friend to @ellendegeneres,” the caption continued. “In his honor we planted this tree so he will be forever remembered on the campus.”
DeGeneres, 65, opened the Ellen Campus last year in an effort to expand the teaching and lab spaces used to study gorillas. The fund, first established by Fossey in 1967, remains the world’s largest and longest-running organization dedicated entirely to gorilla conservation.
Boss became a permanent fixture on DeGeneres’ daytime talk show after landing a gig as a guest DJ in 2014. He was then elevated to co-executive producer in 2020.
Shortly after Boss’ death, DeGeneres candidly spoke about her friend in a teary Instagram video.
While speaking about her grieving process, she explained: “Everyone is in pain and trying to make sense of it, and we’ll never make sense of it. The holidays are hard, I think, anyway, but to honor tWitch I think the best thing that we can do is to laugh, hug each other, play games and dance and sing. That’s the way we honor him, is we do the things that he loved to do, which is dancing.” (People)
