E. Nicholas Genovese
We’ve just now heard that my dear, dear friend Robert has died. Jan and I send Basil and the family our belated condolences from here in San Diego.
I knew Robert—Bob—from our days at Xavier and then at Ohio State, when we shared a new apartment on 19th with his color TV and Pontiac GTO maroon convertible. I’ll never forget us cruising, top down, with Joe O’Connor and Lanie Schwartz, top down, along the Olentangy Freeway, blasting The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Or going to Lazarus at the end of the month to buy steaks because we couldn’t use a credit card at the supermarket to buy chicken livers. Or Bob baking a cake when I’d done something to upset him. Or how he devoted his time to meticulously correcting his Greek students’ quizzes rather than working on that Plautus dissertation.
And then all the years after, when he kept me informed by long letters, the handwritten kind, so that I followed his ups and downs here and abroad and his marriage to Anthe, whom he loved completely, and his kids, who made him so proud. And then—was it 20 years ago?—my visit to Robert the real estate agent and Anthe the nurse and and our reunion with Al Krepina, whom we sadly lost 10 years later. And after Robert lost Anthe, the years he spent in Rhodes—and how he longed to return were it not for the stroke.
I regret—and greatly blame myself for—falling out of touch with him during the years after. There were a few phone calls and emails, but he just wasn’t up to it. I kept him on our Xavier-Marion email list, but after so many years of no responses, I deleted his address—ironically just about the time he died—as though he himself had told me.
He is again, at last, with his Anthe, as he fervently desired. So many years I missed seeing him and enjoying his wit, suspecting that our Parma reunion would be our last time together. Robert was a good man, a wonderful fellow, a devoted husband and father, and my lifelong friend. Ave atque vale, αντίο φίλε μου.
Νίκος
