By Malcolm C. Peck  MH'57
June 26, 2011

I met Bob in September 1953, when we arrived at Mt. Hermon for our freshmen year. At first, he seemed gawky and awkward, the youngest member of our class, having just reached his 13th birthday. But he soon confidently announced himself through the eccentricity and brilliance noted in his obituaries. Within a few days, Bob confided that he was keeping an invisible dinosaur named George in Cottage II. If memory serves, George took up residence under a steam radiator. Bob soon grew bored with freshman math, and began making extra-terrestrial calculations, including the number of nickels needed to form a pile reaching to the moon and the quantity of postage stamps required to fill a square light year. His extraordinary intelligence and youthful insouciance were on display when we took our SATs. I noticed that Bob finished before everyone else, then began scribbling vigorously in the margins of the test booklet. He explained afterwards that, finding some of the questions poorly conceived and carelessly framed, he decided to suggest how they could be improved. I have since wondered how the SAT board in Princeton reacted to the young prodigy's impertinence.

The physical prowess, especially the seeming imperviousness to cold that astonished those of us who later accompanied him on winter mountain expeditions was also in evidence at Mt. Hermon. Bob won a penny wager in freshman year by walking barefoot through the snow from the Cottages to West Hall for a winter breakfast. During fall tennis one could always determine from Bob's mode of dress whether the temperature had reached the freezing point. If it had, Bob would appear on the tennis court in shorts and T-shirt. If the temperature was 33 degrees F or warmer, he dispensed with the shirt.

As valedictorian, Bob eschewed the usual graduation day pontifications and delivered a predictably bold and iconoclastic peroration. He took strong issue with a Northfield girl's observation that one couldn't make friends with a bulldozer. Bob, who had a great affection for all useful machines and mechanical contrivances, won over the fathers in attendance by reminding them of their close attachments to the Model T Fords on which they had learned to drive. He forcefully articulated the main point of his speech, the need to face any task with adequate resources, by announcing that if he were ordered to sink a puny enemy vessel he would find the biggest bomb available and make certain that the offending object was thoroughly pulverized.

Bob's fondness for Mt. Hermon grew over the years. While his somewhat judgmental nature caused him to deliver harsh verdicts on several faculty who failed to meet his standards of didactic excellence, he was deeply grateful to others who he judged to have shaped his life in significant ways. He had a special regard for "Doc" Westin, who introduced him to physics, and he shared my affection for Harold Stetson, our Latin teacher, who swore us to faithfully observe the plurality of "agenda," "data," and "media." 

Although he never took a course with John Williams, Bob so admired his leadership in the Mt. Hermon Outing Club, where Bob was introduced to the mountains, that he insisted on our stopping at Mr. Williams' home, following our 50th anniversary climb on Mt. Adams in the White Mountains with Jon Staley in 2006. Our visit with Mr. Williams, not long before his death, was a heartwarming affirmation of the enduring strength and importance of student-mentor relationships.

Bob went off to MIT on a full scholarship, pursued a double major, and spent a great deal of his time collecting obscure 45 rpm rock and roll records and racing around Boston and Cambridge in all seasons on his ten speed bike. When the spokes of a wheel collapsed, sending Bob face first into a curb, he lost his front teeth, but picked up the twisted remains of the bike and walked calmly to the infirmary, where he tossed the bike into the bushes and checked himself in. Learning of his accident a few hours later, I went anxiously to see how he was doing. He was propped up in bed, puzzling out an analog computer circuit problem for the Philbrick Co., where he worked part time. With his teeth dangling from nerve endings, Bob could communicate only by grunting or writing on a notepad, but he was totally unfazed by his misadventure.

I was at nearby Harvard, and shared various adventures, some in Boston and Cambridge and some in the mountains, with Bob and our good (sadly departed) friend and classmate, Mayer Wantman. In our friendly rival jestings, Mayer and I would accuse Bob and other Techies of being uncouth nerds identifiable by their lack of etiquette and their omnipresent slide rules and plastic pocket liners, while he would pretend to dismiss us as effete sherry-sipping snobs. This good humored cultivation of contrasting identities, derived from the two distinct academic cultures, continued to the present. 

As Bob was finishing his studies in electrical engineering and embarking on a career devoted to the brilliantly successful design of analog computer circuitry, he had the good fortune to meet Nancy Baker, a tall, attractive lady with almost as much enthusiasm and energy for mountain-climbing as he. I was honored to be Bob's best man, when they were married in the Mt. Hermon Chapel. The wedding reception was held in the Northfield Chateau, now nostalgically recalled only in fading photos and memories. Bob and Nancy would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this August. They were well matched, with a shared passion that eventually took them to the Himalayas. The relationship would not have endured, however, without Nancy's capacity, which Bob would often wonderingly acknowledge to me, for cheerfully accommodating his eccentricities.

Bob's career took him to San Francisco, and mine took me to the Washington, DC area. He and Nancy found occasions to visit Aida and me, and we managed to drop in on them from time to time, once for a quick repast at their home between flights en route to the Philippines. We compensated to some extent for the paucity of direct contact through mailings of odd clippings calculated to entertain the recipient, 'phone calls, and, in recent years, frequent E-mails. On the day of Bob's death, I received two E-mails from him, close to the average over the last few months. Most of these were light-hearted, including trivia quizzes to see who could identify more songs by 'fifties rock groups like the Coasters and Dell Vikings. Frequently, the exchanges were a bit raunchy, as befitted a couple of boys who had always resisted the idea of completely growing up. At other times it was serious, touching on the commanding events of the day. Often, he would launch into diatribes precipitated by the latest reports of Islamic terrorism, by proposing an across-the-board approach to Arabs and Muslims not far removed from General Sherman's reputed strategy for dealing with unruly Native Americans. I would gently remind him that personal losses made me painfully aware of the real danger posed by such terrorism and that, having devoted nearly half a century to studying and working with Arabs and Muslims and writing numerous articles and several books about them, my take was that a somewhat more nuanced and fact-based approach to combating terrorism might prove more successful. He would grudgingly concede that I might have a point, until the next front page outrage in Baghdad or Kandahar occurred, then he would let go with another blast.

On any subject about which he felt strongly Bob could deliver opinions with considerable heat, even seeming vehemence. I observed that those who were unprepared for these outbursts could be rather taken aback. If they took the trouble to probe a bit, they soon learned that that was "just Bob," and that his essential character and disposition were at odds with initial impressions. He loved to cultivate a ferocious appearance, featuring a beard that made him look like John Brown in the full fury of his abolitionist crusade. The appearance belied a true gentleness that shone through warmly in close relationships.

I think Bob had an appreciation of his own genius, but he was utterly without pretense or the slightest sense of self-importance and took instant offense at such exhibitions in others. He drove an ancient VW Microbus and the old Beetle in which he died, and his clothes often looked as though ready for donation to Good Will. He had a wonderfully puckish sense of humor, which was evident in the return address used for his frequent communications, sometimes published, to Herb Caen, the late newspaper columnist in San Francisco--"from Bob Pease, the guy who lives at the corner of El Camino Real and El Camino Imaginary."

Our thoughts often turned back to the cherished companion pleasures of the trail. One of the E-mails sent to me on the day he died attached photos of Bob and Nancy 40 years ago on a Grand Canyon hike with their sons, Benjamin and Jonathan. Their expressions all reflect a youthful joy and exuberance that was the hallmark of our many adventures together in the mountains. The newspaper reports that referred to "an elderly man" had it all wrong. Bob remained entirely youthful in outlook and behavior. Had he successfully negotiated the fatal curve and lived for another two decades, he could never have become elderly.

Bob would always bound ahead of the rest of us on the trail, though invariably carrying the heaviest pack. To our anxious inquiries as to how much further our day's objective was, the unvarying response was "We're gaining on it!" Off he would go, shortly to be found sitting impatiently on a trailside rock or snow bank, then cheerfully chiding us when we took too long munching snacks and gulping water. I picture him now,  pressing forward up some heavenly trail, anxious to see what new vista will be disclosed at the next overlook. He will be urging us onward, assuring us that we are getting closer, his face radiant with the sheer delight of the adventure. I hope he will be waiting for us.