Thanks, Roy

I first "met" Roy when I initially encountered the CHNM web site, back in 1998. I was just starting to ride the IT wave of the late nineties, but had long pondered grad school. I was casting about for ideas on how to combine my interests in history and technology. I had had GMU recommended to me, and in the course of researching the school discovered the CHNM. I remember feeling quite excited-here was a group dedicated to the kind of work I was very much interested in pursuing. To top it off, the featured project at the time was the site on the French Revolution, which was my area of concentration.

I was accepted to GMU, and remember Roy and Mike O'Malley conducting a phone interview with me for an assistantship position. I can still recall Roy's voice, and Mike's, as we shared our enthusiasm for the work the Center was doing. Both Roy and Mike were kind, and ended up offering me a position.

Due to career reasons, I didn't attend Mason at that time, instead taking the plunge in August of 2006. I renewed my long-distance acquaintance with Roy at that time, and was happy to be offered, again, an assistantship position at the CHNM. I remember meeting Roy in person for the first time that August, and telling him how pleased I had been to make his earlier acquaintance, if only by phone.

At that time, and since then, Roy always seemed to me a most humane and kind man, ready to listen to even the ramblings of a new graduate student in a humble and engaged manner. What he started in 1994 inspired me in the late nineties, and it still does. The qualities I observed in Roy I hope to make a part of myself if I enter into an academic career, and frankly, they are qualities that will serve me well in life.

Thank you, Roy, for following your vision with passion, humility, and humanity, and being a man who sets the bar high.