Richard was a double major in Physics and Mathematics, and did an honors project in Physics constructing a laser. After Oberlin, he spent a year hitchhiking in Belize and Mexico. He ended up in a doctoral program in Physics at the University of Washington. He died in an automobile accident in Seattle while he was in grad school, in 1977 or 1978. His brother survived that accident.
Richard and I were a couple throughout most of our years at Oberlin. He was a quirky guy- knew every Bob Dylan lyric, could play a mean piano, and loved soccer. In our freshmen year, we raised two ducks and (for a while a chicken) which were illegally housed in his single room at Burton. We used to walk the ducks to the Con pond for their swims. The ducks made the centerfold of an Oberlin alumni magazine in spring 1970. They were then patriated to a farm outside Oberlin, where we hoped they would live happily ever after.
I met Richard Katz in Burton Hall 2C on the first day of our freshman year. He introduced himself as Pancake, a name he said was bestowed on him by a commune in Zoar Valley south of Buffalo, NY while living with them that summer for the vast number of pancakes he consumed while on acid. The commune’s converted school bus would stop in Oberlin for a few days that fall and Richard later lived with them in the Sonoran Desert outside of Tucson during the summer he interned at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Richard’s love of Bob Dylan and The Band as well as for soccer immediately endeared him to me. He knew everyone of Dylan’s songs by heart and would gladly sing them with a voice not nearly as good as Bob’s - it would always make me think of Robbie Robertson’s line about Spike Jones in Up On Cripple Creek: “I can’t take the way he sings but I love to hear him talk.” The Band’s concert in Cleveland as well as the Rolling Stones concert in Detroit that Richard and I attended thanks to my roommate Andy Axilrod, who got the tickets and drove, were high points of first semester freshman year. Burton 2C also fielded a pretty good intramural soccer team that year, with Richard leading the way along with Eli Pollack and Louis Weigele.
Richard had an insatiable curiosity, coupled with a not-quite-so-innocent outrageousness. His inquisitiveness together with a love of mathematics led him to major in mathematics and physics, which became his passion. He was also an extremely reliable source for most drugs, whether this was the ubiquitous marijuana, a block of hashish he smuggled back from Israel following time on a kibbutz, some kief, or the reputedly pure Sandoz and other forms of LSD.
Richard met Jean Robinson first semester and as Jean has said, they were a couple through most of their years at Oberlin. I would room with Richard back in Burton our junior year though he spent most of the time at Asia House with Jean, and then off campus along with his fellow physics major Rich London senior year.
Richard and I did a fair amount of cross-county traveling during the summers of our Oberlin years, sometimes hitchhiking and other times with considerably more reliable rides in classmates’ cars, backpacking and camping throughout much of the American West and a portion of the Canadian Rockies.
In the summer of 1970, we drove to California with Jon Albrink, also Burton 2C, and his brother Rick in Rick’s VW van. After stopping in Boulder so Richard could obtain more marijuana for all of us, we headed up to Rocky Mountain NP, hoping to cross over through the park’s alpine tundra on Trail Ridge Road. It started to snow, however, and that road was closed so we had to head back to the interstate. We proceeded on to Lake Tahoe, where Jon and Rick’s parents had a cabin. Another Oberlin freshman friend, Peter Rosalsky joined us there and after backpacking in the Sierra Nevada's Desolation Wilderness, we went to Harrah’s Casino in Stateline, NV for our big post-hike meal. Management there, however, viewed us as far too disreputable (despite having all showered and put on our best clean clothes) and threw us out so we had to eat at another casino.
Following Tahoe, Peter, Richard and I would later drive from Los Angeles to Albuquerque in Peter’s sports car, camping one night on the rim of the Grand Canyon and singing Dylan songs at the top of our lungs just about the whole ride, to visit Jean Robinson. Richard and I outstayed our welcome there at least so far as Jean’s father was concerned and we then hitchhiked up to Cheyenne, WY (we took a Greyhound bus through Colorado given the Colorado State Patrol’s reputation then), hoping to go to the Tetons and Yellowstone.
After spending most of a day in Cheyenne trying to get a ride west on I-80 with no success, we crossed the road and headed east. A fellow who had driven straight through from Los Angeles stopped and gave us a ride on the condition that we kept him awake. He finally pulled off at Grand Island, NE to get a motel room, promising to pick us up if we were still there when he woke up. Richard and I both figured we would be, however, as serendipity would have it, Burton 2C section mates Jay Angoff and Jerry Greenfield happened to get off at Grand Island for gas. Returning to I-80, they picked us up as we stood on the entrance ramp and kindly drove us all the way to my parents’ apartment in Chicago.
In the summer of 1971, I spent several glorious weeks backpacking in the Tetons with Richard, John Day (another Burton 2C section mate and a chemistry soon-to-turn physics major), and Stephanie DiCenzo after we hitchhiked out from St. Louis. On our last night at Phelps Lake across from the Rockefeller family compound, we hitchhiked down to Jackson for a real meal prior to starting our extended hikes. Returning to our camp, we came across a black bear walking down the trail in front of us and it was all the three of us could do to restrain Richard from stalking the bear far too closely.
Following graduation In 1973, John Day, Jon Albrink, Richard, Jean and I drove out to Albuquerque to drop Jean off at her home. On the way, we spent one night all sitting in John’s car in Muskogee, OK waiting for gas to be delivered the next day. As we finally continued on our way to New Mexico, Jean assured us that people there would be much friendlier, only to be pulled over and searched by the NM State Police as soon as we crossed the border.
Later, we drove to Boulder, CO (where we attended a great Weather Report concert) to get Rich London. After a quick preparatory backpacking trip in Utah, which was our first experience having to carry all our water, Richard, Rich and I then backpacked in the Primitive Area of Idaho while John drove home to Minnesota to attend to some med school admission matters. On his return, the four of us headed up to Jasper Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada, after assuring the Canadian border officials that there were no drugs in the trunk of the car. There we undertook a fairly lengthy backpacking trip during what turned out to be a massive mosquito outbreak. We quickly understood why some of the old fur trappers were literally driven mad by those insects.
Over the years after Oberlin, Richard would show up most place I was staying; whether this was an off-campus apartment on College Street in the fall of 1973 on his way down though Mexico to Central America or the apartment in Cleveland Heights I shared at various times with Eli Pollack and his brother Danny ‘74, Andy Axilrod, and Rich Seckel while attending law school. In between hitchhiking forays to Belize, Richard appeared at Jerry Greenfield’s apartment on E. 10th Street in New York City during the summer of 1974, where Stephanie and I as well as classmate Peter Acker were staying. Richard and I watched several closed-circuit broadcasts of World Cup games at Madison Square Garden and the Felt Forum during his stay.
In June of 1975, Richard came down from Tonawanda, NY in his mother’s Camaro to Stephanie's and my apartment in New Haven and he and I drove down the Connecticut Turnpike - he got off and back on to avoid every toll booth - to see the first game Pelé played for the New York Cosmos out on Randalls Island. It took us quite some time to find the decrepit Downing Stadium where the Cosmos where then playing.
In the summer of 1976, Richard met Stephanie, one of my law school friends, and me in Yellowstone, where the four of us backpacked down part of the Bechler Valley in the southwest section of the park. There were several cloudbursts along the way and at one point we ended up pitching our tents in about two inches of standing water.
Stephanie and I later visited Richard in Seattle where he was working on his Physics PhD at the University of Washington. This was back in the pre-Microsoft/Amazon days when Seattle was a much smaller and more pleasant, one-company town with only Boeing. The three of us went backpacking in Olympic NP, ending with a spectacular evening spent on a beach near La Push, WA with one of the many huge bonfires Richard loved to build.
Stephanie and I were planning to fly out to Seattle to see Richard and attend the November 10, 1978 Dylan concert at the University of Washington with him, when a mutual friend called on October 28th to say Richard had died in automobile accident on the Olympic Peninsula. We went to Seattle and listened to Bob Dylan in his memory.
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful and moving narrative of your experiences with Richard. I did not know Richard, but you beautifully captured his adventurous character in your writing, as well as the spirit of the times.
Oh Kent! This is lovely. So many great memories all of which capture Richard and the group of friends that stayed together even after leaving Burton! Some things I had forgotten- like my father's unwelcome attitude toward you all! (Indeed he liked that Richard was into physics and math but that was about all he liked.). Richard was really an amazingly quirky guy. I wonder what he would be like as a 71 year old! He left a void for many of us I think.
Jean Robinson
Richard was a double major in Physics and Mathematics, and did an honors project in Physics constructing a laser. After Oberlin, he spent a year hitchhiking in Belize and Mexico. He ended up in a doctoral program in Physics at the University of Washington. He died in an automobile accident in Seattle while he was in grad school, in 1977 or 1978. His brother survived that accident.
Richard and I were a couple throughout most of our years at Oberlin. He was a quirky guy- knew every Bob Dylan lyric, could play a mean piano, and loved soccer. In our freshmen year, we raised two ducks and (for a while a chicken) which were illegally housed in his single room at Burton. We used to walk the ducks to the Con pond for their swims. The ducks made the centerfold of an Oberlin alumni magazine in spring 1970. They were then patriated to a farm outside Oberlin, where we hoped they would live happily ever after.
Jean Robinson
The exact date of his death is October 28, 1978. May his memory be a blessing.
Kent Borges
Recollections of Richard Katz
I met Richard Katz in Burton Hall 2C on the first day of our freshman year. He introduced himself as Pancake, a name he said was bestowed on him by a commune in Zoar Valley south of Buffalo, NY while living with them that summer for the vast number of pancakes he consumed while on acid. The commune’s converted school bus would stop in Oberlin for a few days that fall and Richard later lived with them in the Sonoran Desert outside of Tucson during the summer he interned at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Richard’s love of Bob Dylan and The Band as well as for soccer immediately endeared him to me. He knew everyone of Dylan’s songs by heart and would gladly sing them with a voice not nearly as good as Bob’s - it would always make me think of Robbie Robertson’s line about Spike Jones in Up On Cripple Creek: “I can’t take the way he sings but I love to hear him talk.” The Band’s concert in Cleveland as well as the Rolling Stones concert in Detroit that Richard and I attended thanks to my roommate Andy Axilrod, who got the tickets and drove, were high points of first semester freshman year. Burton 2C also fielded a pretty good intramural soccer team that year, with Richard leading the way along with Eli Pollack and Louis Weigele.
Richard had an insatiable curiosity, coupled with a not-quite-so-innocent outrageousness. His inquisitiveness together with a love of mathematics led him to major in mathematics and physics, which became his passion. He was also an extremely reliable source for most drugs, whether this was the ubiquitous marijuana, a block of hashish he smuggled back from Israel following time on a kibbutz, some kief, or the reputedly pure Sandoz and other forms of LSD.
Richard met Jean Robinson first semester and as Jean has said, they were a couple through most of their years at Oberlin. I would room with Richard back in Burton our junior year though he spent most of the time at Asia House with Jean, and then off campus along with his fellow physics major Rich London senior year.
Richard and I did a fair amount of cross-county traveling during the summers of our Oberlin years, sometimes hitchhiking and other times with considerably more reliable rides in classmates’ cars, backpacking and camping throughout much of the American West and a portion of the Canadian Rockies.
In the summer of 1970, we drove to California with Jon Albrink, also Burton 2C, and his brother Rick in Rick’s VW van. After stopping in Boulder so Richard could obtain more marijuana for all of us, we headed up to Rocky Mountain NP, hoping to cross over through the park’s alpine tundra on Trail Ridge Road. It started to snow, however, and that road was closed so we had to head back to the interstate. We proceeded on to Lake Tahoe, where Jon and Rick’s parents had a cabin. Another Oberlin freshman friend, Peter Rosalsky joined us there and after backpacking in the Sierra Nevada's Desolation Wilderness, we went to Harrah’s Casino in Stateline, NV for our big post-hike meal. Management there, however, viewed us as far too disreputable (despite having all showered and put on our best clean clothes) and threw us out so we had to eat at another casino.
Following Tahoe, Peter, Richard and I would later drive from Los Angeles to Albuquerque in Peter’s sports car, camping one night on the rim of the Grand Canyon and singing Dylan songs at the top of our lungs just about the whole ride, to visit Jean Robinson. Richard and I outstayed our welcome there at least so far as Jean’s father was concerned and we then hitchhiked up to Cheyenne, WY (we took a Greyhound bus through Colorado given the Colorado State Patrol’s reputation then), hoping to go to the Tetons and Yellowstone.
After spending most of a day in Cheyenne trying to get a ride west on I-80 with no success, we crossed the road and headed east. A fellow who had driven straight through from Los Angeles stopped and gave us a ride on the condition that we kept him awake. He finally pulled off at Grand Island, NE to get a motel room, promising to pick us up if we were still there when he woke up. Richard and I both figured we would be, however, as serendipity would have it, Burton 2C section mates Jay Angoff and Jerry Greenfield happened to get off at Grand Island for gas. Returning to I-80, they picked us up as we stood on the entrance ramp and kindly drove us all the way to my parents’ apartment in Chicago.
In the summer of 1971, I spent several glorious weeks backpacking in the Tetons with Richard, John Day (another Burton 2C section mate and a chemistry soon-to-turn physics major), and Stephanie DiCenzo after we hitchhiked out from St. Louis. On our last night at Phelps Lake across from the Rockefeller family compound, we hitchhiked down to Jackson for a real meal prior to starting our extended hikes. Returning to our camp, we came across a black bear walking down the trail in front of us and it was all the three of us could do to restrain Richard from stalking the bear far too closely.
Following graduation In 1973, John Day, Jon Albrink, Richard, Jean and I drove out to Albuquerque to drop Jean off at her home. On the way, we spent one night all sitting in John’s car in Muskogee, OK waiting for gas to be delivered the next day. As we finally continued on our way to New Mexico, Jean assured us that people there would be much friendlier, only to be pulled over and searched by the NM State Police as soon as we crossed the border.
Later, we drove to Boulder, CO (where we attended a great Weather Report concert) to get Rich London. After a quick preparatory backpacking trip in Utah, which was our first experience having to carry all our water, Richard, Rich and I then backpacked in the Primitive Area of Idaho while John drove home to Minnesota to attend to some med school admission matters. On his return, the four of us headed up to Jasper Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada, after assuring the Canadian border officials that there were no drugs in the trunk of the car. There we undertook a fairly lengthy backpacking trip during what turned out to be a massive mosquito outbreak. We quickly understood why some of the old fur trappers were literally driven mad by those insects.
Over the years after Oberlin, Richard would show up most place I was staying; whether this was an off-campus apartment on College Street in the fall of 1973 on his way down though Mexico to Central America or the apartment in Cleveland Heights I shared at various times with Eli Pollack and his brother Danny ‘74, Andy Axilrod, and Rich Seckel while attending law school. In between hitchhiking forays to Belize, Richard appeared at Jerry Greenfield’s apartment on E. 10th Street in New York City during the summer of 1974, where Stephanie and I as well as classmate Peter Acker were staying. Richard and I watched several closed-circuit broadcasts of World Cup games at Madison Square Garden and the Felt Forum during his stay.
In June of 1975, Richard came down from Tonawanda, NY in his mother’s Camaro to Stephanie's and my apartment in New Haven and he and I drove down the Connecticut Turnpike - he got off and back on to avoid every toll booth - to see the first game Pelé played for the New York Cosmos out on Randalls Island. It took us quite some time to find the decrepit Downing Stadium where the Cosmos where then playing.
In the summer of 1976, Richard met Stephanie, one of my law school friends, and me in Yellowstone, where the four of us backpacked down part of the Bechler Valley in the southwest section of the park. There were several cloudbursts along the way and at one point we ended up pitching our tents in about two inches of standing water.
Stephanie and I later visited Richard in Seattle where he was working on his Physics PhD at the University of Washington. This was back in the pre-Microsoft/Amazon days when Seattle was a much smaller and more pleasant, one-company town with only Boeing. The three of us went backpacking in Olympic NP, ending with a spectacular evening spent on a beach near La Push, WA with one of the many huge bonfires Richard loved to build.
Stephanie and I were planning to fly out to Seattle to see Richard and attend the November 10, 1978 Dylan concert at the University of Washington with him, when a mutual friend called on October 28th to say Richard had died in automobile accident on the Olympic Peninsula. We went to Seattle and listened to Bob Dylan in his memory.
Kent Borges
Brian ODonnell
Kent,
Thank you for sharing this thoughtful and moving narrative of your experiences with Richard. I did not know Richard, but you beautifully captured his adventurous character in your writing, as well as the spirit of the times.
Jean Robinson
Oh Kent! This is lovely. So many great memories all of which capture Richard and the group of friends that stayed together even after leaving Burton! Some things I had forgotten- like my father's unwelcome attitude toward you all! (Indeed he liked that Richard was into physics and math but that was about all he liked.). Richard was really an amazingly quirky guy. I wonder what he would be like as a 71 year old! He left a void for many of us I think.