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I first met Roy in 1983, serving then as the liaison librarian to the history department. I had gone up to his office on the fifth floor of the library and introduced myself--explaining that I was there to do whatever I could to better enable the library to support the history department. We hit it off from the start since we were both interested in computers and neither of us was in a position to do much about it within our areas of responsibility.

Roy was polite and listened to my library spiel for a few minutes without much reaction; that is, until I happened to mention the word dBASE. He was suddenly very interested and in no time had me helping him figure out how to code a menuing system for a database he was using to store information about oral history interviews.

Once we finally got it working, I remember we both laughed over the idea that the university's computer center had just decreed that dBASE would not be supported and everyone should standardize on Condor 3. We both instantly agreed it was just better to go underground.