Thanks, Roy

I knew Roy, like many other diligent graduate students, through his scholarship long before I met him. I read _Eight Hours for What We Will_ for my doctoral oral comprehensive exam in U.S. History. While I enjoyed many of the books I studied for the exam, _Eight Hours_ stood out for me as my maternal grandparents were born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts in the early twentieth century, the world that Roy so vividly captures in the book. My grandfather, who was Jewish, was an usher at the Plymouth Theater and he met my grandmother when she began frequenting the Saturday matinee with her girlfriends. Whenever they recounted their love story, my grandparents enjoyed arguing about who started flirting first, but the punch line was always the same: they fell in love, but my grandfather's family refused to accept the romance because my grandmother was not Jewish. As a result, they decided to elope and move to Detroit where my grandmother had family. They spent the rest of their lives in Detroit, where I was eventually born in Henry Ford Hospital. My roots in Detroit, of course, inspired me to write my dissertation, and eventually book, on the history of Motown and the city's black community. When it came time in my oral exam to discuss _Eight Hours_, I couldn't resist the opportunity to mention my personal connection to the text. I told my examiners, "I am fairly certain Rosenzweig's arguments about the role of the movie theaters in creating ethnic mixing in Worcester are correct. I am not sure I would actually exist if it wasn't true." It got a big laugh, which is one thing everyone hopes for in an oral exam.

When I got my on-campus job interview at George Mason a few years later and met Roy in person, I finally got to thank him for his book and how it was one of the highlights of my oral exam. Roy's eyes just lit up when I told him my grandparents' love story. He took such delight in seeing these connections between the stories of people's personal lives and how they revealed something larger about American history. His interest in understanding the historical consciousness of everyday Americans was eventually fully realized in the book, _The Presence of the Past_, which he co-wrote with David Thelen.

I worked with Roy for twelve years. While I always admired his incredible intellect, his vision for the future of the discipline of history in our new media age, and his wisdom about departmental matters large and small, what I will miss most is his friendship. One of the greatest ironies of Roy's life was that his own "eight hours for what we will" were incredibly jam-packed with work-related tasks and projects. Nevertheless, he was always there for his friends. I think one of the reasons he was such an advocate for collaboration was that it gave him a way to mix business with pleasure and enjoy the company of his friends and colleagues while he also pursued his professional and intellectual passions. I will never forget his kindness, his willingness to help me with my own intellectual work whenever I needed it, and the ways in which he taught me how to be a professional scholar. It was an honor to be his colleague, a joy to be his friend, and I will miss him always.