Little Red:

a rose beneath a cloud;
may she learn to swim in the ocean of love.

Gorilla Boy:

does happy better than anyone - climbing so many wonderful trees of joy!

Grace and Trad, a wonderful niece and wonderful nephew:

James "Wizard" Moore, who helped me explore the pleasure of engineering.

Beatrice Louise Jones Hanks, who effortlessly showed her peers that being brilliant did not require awkwardness.

Randy Burton, who coaxed me down to Texas, and has remained a true and solid friend such as I have rarely known.

Dave Scott: A brilliant and kind technologist, to whom I owe much of my training in "real world" wafer processing.

I owe an immense debt to John Freccero for his course in Dante. His deep understanding of the literate medieval worldview, and of how that worldview was refracted through Dante, were very illuminating.

Leslie Brisman: I profited from some great teachers in college, and Leslie Brisman was one of them. He taught me how to read fast poems slowly, and I greatly enjoyed the precision of his fine taste and intellect. I can still hear his voice reading Milton, Shelley, or Marvell.

Alejandro Planchart: a music theory professor who would whip out part-singing books when the theory got a bit slow; knowledgeable, kind, and fun.

Ruth Kurzbauer: a beautiful and talented musician who introduced me to Berlioz and Gounod. I would say I owe her for that, but she is too much a fountainhead to owe: one receives, with joy, as from the sun.

Mike Palm, a child of light, one of the cleverest of our class at Yale. He was enigmatic to many of us, perhaps because he was not then out of the closet, but he was a gift to our lives nonetheless.

Howard Hill

Russ Pinizzotto

Warner Scott

Andy Penz

Clif Penn: one of the greatest engineers I have worked with, and a very kind mentor.

Roger Haken: An immensely creative technologist, with the rare gift of presenting his innovations with such clarity as to make them seem obvious. His death was a great loss.

I miss my father. He grew up in a very tough environment, and did damned well considering. His grandfather's black chauffeur Fount was a mentor to Dad, and I think Dad's relation with Fount might have been a factor in Dad's adult activity in the Civil Rights movement (which I am very proud of).

Marguerite Drew Bardin was a great Southern lady, and as tough as she needed to be to bring her family through some real troubles. By the time I knew her the tough times were long past, and she had time to relax and enjoy her grandchildren. I remember her with great fondness.

Karl Bardin: A character indeed, who I think brought my grandmother a lot of comfort and happiness. He was a good stepfather, and very kind to his stepson's children.

Martha Walsh: she was a wonderful enthusiastic chemistry teacher, with a love for her subject and generosity for the many children whose lives she touched.

Thomas Nelson: a kindly music teacher, retired to Florida from the Midwest in the 1950s, and was kind and inspirational to some bratty students! A great component of teaching is love, and I learned love of music from him much more (young as I was) than of music itself.

Adam Parry: a fine classicist whom I had the luck to get in Beginning Greek. His depth of knowledge provided flashes of illumination, without making him less nimble in the presence of new ideas.

and in the turbulent household I grew up in, a strong and clever cat named Herky was a touchstone and reassurance over many years. (If this seems odd to you, be thankful you grew up in a calmer household than I did!)

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