Thanks, Roy

In this story I'm pretty much of a fool, and fate protects the foolish, but the story will have a lot of familiar aspect of Roy.

Many years ago in my first tenure track job I learned that my dissertation director had been named president of the OAH. I was dead broke at the time and the only way I could afford to go to the convention, which was on the other coast, was if my department paid for. So I got together with a very well known US historian and we cooked up a panel proposal. I added a few plaintive sentences saying that it was my mentor's OAH and really would like to go and could only afford it if the panel was accepted. Well, to my surprise--it was good panel--they rejected it.

I was mad. I looked up members of the committee who turned me down and hey, the chair is this guy Rosenzweig, whose book I really liked but by now I'm in a good Irish rage about it and I call 411 and I get Rosenzweig's home number and I'm going to give him a very much unsought piece of my mind.

The lines' busy. It's probably 1990, email's not ubiquitous yet, and anyone who knew Roy the knows the line was ALWAYS busy. But I call again--busy. Rehearsing my speech of outrage, I call again--busy. I must have tried for three hours and I never got through. I owe my subsequent career entirely to that busy signal.

A few years later GMU advertised job in US history, and I applied figuring "this is a waste of time, Rosenzweig has it in for me." some kind of political thing, I thought, or he doesn't like my book, or something--I had various elaborate theories. Lo and behold, I get the job at Mason, and Roy becomes my best friend. Thank you, primitive land lines and dial up modems.

Years later, I told Roy about the whole episode, and characteristically, he was chagrined. Equally characteristically, he had kept every record, and he went downstairs at Jackson St. and I heard clanking and shifting and thumping and he come up with documents that explained the whole thing. He hadn't made the decision, but he wouldn't say any more than that.

So there's Roy's decency, his graciousness, his attention to detail, and his willingness to be friends with the hotheaded and the flawed. He was forgiving, and patient, and generous; he was extraordinarily kind. I was lucky to have known him. It's a story about my foolishness, but also my immense gratitude that fate allowed me to call him friend