I have been trying to wrap my mind around Roy for the last few days in order to write something for this blog. He is slippery like the form of writing is slippery. It is so easy to get it wrong, to say something trite. I don’t want to do that. He would give me shit. In fact he is sitting on my shoulder right now, peering down at what I am saying.
I am remembering Roy as a great big bear of a man who had whatever that quality is that draws one to him. As his student and as his friend, I wanted his input, and his guidance. There was something very reassuring about him, a mixture of kindness, that Utah drawl, and a sense of humor that was irreverent.
He could be grumpy and taciturn. He did not hide his disappointment. When he read my papers or heard my thoughts, I could always depend on his honest opinion. But despite all his pessimism, he was a romantic. He once told me that one of the big love affairs of his life was literature. It changed everything.
As his student I was swept along by the emotion that he brought to the classroom and later I went off to Romania on the wave of his enthusiasm for that country. The stories he told were filled with drama, mysterious contradictions and extraordinary landscape. Stories, not the least of which was about Corina, the beautiful Romanian woman he had fallen in love with, expressed best his love for life.
After graduating from the program and returning from Romania, I didn’t get to see that much of Roy. I am sad about this; a lot of years have gone by though it seems like a flash. Now his son Liviu, a baby then, is a grown man. It is shocking to me that he’s no longer with us. But as I stood on the deck outside Corina and Roy’s home talking with another of his sons, who I had not met before, I felt almost as if I were talking to Roy, that same Utah drawl and easy manner, a resemblance in the eyes, and an emotional enthusiasm for what lay ahead, qualities that I found in Roy that a made him such a wonderful teacher and a valued friend.
I will miss him.
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