He bought a new [Volkswagen] Bug then we went on another hiking trip that summer. We went all the way to Georgia, the Ozarks, and came all the way to Mansfield, Vermont. We were in the White Mountains in New Hampshire where we fought the mosquitoes like crazy. It’s classic Bob. We were climbing, we started climbing the gorge, there was a big gorge there, and we wanted to climb this particular mountain, because it was the first stop to get to Mt. Washington and so we climbed it. It was really hot and we came to a ledge and the wind and the mosquitoes were really plentiful. So we decided to camp for the night and it must’ve been myself, Bob, Meryl and George and Nancy, and we had some hot dogs and I opened them up and I showed Bob and I said, “They don’t look too great.” And he said, “Oh, let’s do it anyway.” So that’s Bob. We roasted them, cooked those hot dogs up as well as we could, very well, in fact. They were crisp and we ate them. They were so delicious. I mean, that’s got to be taking that kind of a risk. And he laughed. So he was not too careful about being careful with others. But that sort of rollicking, flamboyant mood of his, it’s a buoyant mood, and he knew he could work it out.

John Resenbrink,
University of Chicago graduate school classmate and early Williams College faculty colleague