Today is the eleven year anniversary of our father Robert’s death. When I consider how much has happened in our lives over those eleven years, it seems like a long time ago that Dad was tragically lost. But in my own head it does not feel like all that long ago that Dad was a vital presence in our lives. He was inspiring in many ways, and his inspiration still lives and breathes through me.

Dad was a quiet, unassuming person: the polar opposite of what one might call “flashy”. His childhood nickname — given to him by his sister Karen and/or his brother Eric — was “dazzler”. Dad was dazzling in many ways, but calling him “dazzler” had to also be a bit tongue-in-cheek, because even his most spectacular exploits were done in the most humble manner. (I will let Eric or Karen post something about the origin of the “dazzler” nickname… I am excited to better understand where it came from and what it meant!).

What I found most spectacular about Dad was his curiosity, a curiosity that led to a great variety of explorations. Dad wasn’t exactly a geographical wayfarer, but he did his share of traveling to unexpected places. And even when he was firmly rooted in a particular location, he was always traveling in the non-geographical world of ideas.

One of Mom and Dad’s first close experiences together was a trip to Africa. Along with two other classmates from Pomona, they spent the summer between their junior and senior years in Uganda through a program called Crossroads Africa. After graduation, Dad returned to Africa as a member of the Peace Corps in Liberia. I wish that I knew more about Dad’s experience in the Peace Corps. I know that he spent around two years working with local farmers to increase their crop yields, but that is about the extent of what I remember him telling me.

I think that living in Africa taught Dad how to be comfortable with discomfort, a characteristic that aided in future adventures. Dad loved going camping, and was perfectly happy to haul a heavy pack, sleep in cramped quarters, and endure the vagaries of wild weather. I think that he took particular pride in his ability to negotiate the challenges of leaving most technology behind, and was always the lead in finding firewood, setting up tents, and hauling water. We spent summer after summer camping at Merck Forest, and although both Mom and Dad were comparably enthusiastic about this family tradition, I think that Dad’s enthusiasm for the exploratory nature of camping was a major motivation behind our consistent outdoor vacations.

Dad was also an avid biker who always rode a touring bike of some sort. He was not concerned with getting anywhere fast on the bike; in fact, rushing was kind of an anathema to his general style. He loved to explore on the bike, and I remember when I was in high school that we used to ride all over Huntington on obscure routes that Dad would have charted after pondering a local map for hours. Dad really like to get the on-the-ground feel for places, and was happy to ride somewhere simply because we have never ridden there before.

Dad wasn’t just a geographical explorer. He also loved to explore the world of ideas. Interestingly he was as excited to explore the world of kinesthetic ideas as he was to explore the world of intellectual ideas. There are so many Dad explorations into the world of ideas, so I will just highlight a few here.

He was an avid gardener, and was frequently experimenting with different techniques for making his garden more efficient and productive. A guy who hated to waste things, he often re-purposed materials found on the side of the road in the garden. There were also a lot of kits constructed over the years to create greenhouses and other growth chambers.

Dad was also a big explorer of technologies. I was among the first of my friends to have a personal computer at home, thanks to Dad’s crafting of a Heathkit computer (yes, it was built from a kit!). Dad was far more patient than most in learning how to negotiate the then very user-unfriendly world of early-days personal computing; as with his other explorations, enduring discomfort and difficulty was secondary to reaching uncharted territory.

And then there was the boat building. It is kind of an amazing aspiration to decide that you are going to build a kayak — especially when you’ve never even owned one before — but this kind of unusual aspiration was par for Dad’s course. He ended up building two kayaks and one rowboat, and we enjoyed a lot of aquatic adventures in Nova Scotia thanks to his ventures into the world of hull forms, fiberglass, and epoxy.

And of course Dad was an avid explorer of the world of books. Being someone whose job it is to read a lot I am still amazed by the voracious appetite for books that Dad maintained. We used to joke that he really could not be bothered with a book whose spine was anything less than four inches wide, and our bookshelves were always dominated by historical biographies. Dad read a lot, and I always interpreted his passion for history as another manifestation of his love of explorations. He could get as deeply into the world of the historical past as he could get deep into the woods hiking.

When I think of Dad’s enduring influence on me — and what I want to translate from his life into the lives of my children — his passion for exploration stands as one of his most important traits. Like Dad I love to explore, often without an obvious purpose. His life gave me inspiration and license to meander into unexpected places.