I have read this thread about my old friend with much interest, tinged of course with great sadness. I am not per se a member of the Mudcat community, but have been gratified and impressed by the outpouring of condolences and encomia regarding Bob.

I first met him in the fall of 1953, when we were six years old, and fellow first-graders. All during grade school we had every class together, went to junior high together, then high school. Through our college years, and beyond, we maintained a close friendship - my closest. He was the best man at my wedding. In early years, especially when he was running The Heritage, we would play music together - I could even get him to play Beatles songs sometimes! He stayed in music and writing and history, while I went on into law, but he was always there, always a bended ear - the best of friends.

In more recent years we took to emailing back and forth, sometimes more than two or three times a day. It was a way, over the miles between Maine and California, to vent about personal things - but also to talk about mutual interests - music, of course, but also writing, literature, politics, history, genealogy, the process of aging.

On that latter subject, I can only say that it is very difficult to adjust to life without him, nor do I suppose I ever will, completely. The loss of a close friend is traumatic no matter the circumstances, but when the death comes too early, in the scheme of things, and when the loss is of as fine a person as Bob, the tug is even greater.

As all the comments in the thread point out, he was a man of many parts. But he was also an authentic human being, with depths of emotional intelligence and collegiality that are little seen today. He had his idiosyncrasies, certainly, as we all do, but for a life well lived - as a man - his story is one that has much to teach us: how to make a life as an artist, how to combine artistic and family life, how to relate to illness and disease, how to work and think as a scholar and, most especially, as a husband, father, and friend.

We had a mutual interest in the work and friendship of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, and I am reminded of Stenbeck's reaction in writing of the early death of his friend. At the tail end of "About Ed Ricketts," Steinbeck's tribute, the novelist describes Ricketts walking out of the laboratory in Cannery Row, setting out for a night on the town - the body language and habits of the man caught in the vignette. In the same way, I can see (and hear) Bob's shout to start a shanty, see his "loose finger" as he claw hammered the banjo, and, most of all, see (and re-read, in my mind) the incoming email from a man who was such a big part of my life for sixty years. Steinbeck says, of Ricketts, that he couldn't get those images out of his mind and never would.

Ricketts, in Stenbeck's profile, was on his way to meet a deadly confrontation with a train at a grade crossing. Bob was not struck down in this violent way, but rather by the ravages of a hereditary disease, over which, like a train, he had little control. My friend met his end bravely, toughly, and with dignity, just as I would have expected. Gone too early, also like Ricketts, but now - in his music, in his writing, and in the hearts of his family and friends - never to be forgotten.

Doug Carnahan
Redondo Beach, CA