We’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this, but I still don’t know what to say. Robin was technically my step-dad, and even though we weren’t related by blood he had an incredible impact on the man I have become, and the men my little boys will grow into. He showed me, daily, how to be a good dad. 

So here I am, the day before this service, trying to put into words what that means. I’m on a flight home from a business trip, which seems fitting since Robin spent so much time commuting around the world. And I spent the last week in London, appropriate for obvious reasons. While we were there, I went for a long run with my wife, just like he and my mom loved to do. 

So I’ll offer this, a couple of Robin’s highlights in fathering.

First, while I was in Cub Scouts he helped me make one epic, or maybe I should say EPRI, Pinewood Derby car. First, with my dad I created the body of the car and hollowed out a cavity to fill with weight to give the car a low center of gravity and maximum momentum. Robin helped me melt some sort of soldering metal into the body of the car, but only then did we apply the magic touch. He brought home some super duper definitely-not-available-at-the-hardware-store metal lubricant from EPRI that we applied to the axles, and man did that car fly. I won my Cub Scout competition and went to whatever the next level was. I won that too, I think, and advanced to yet the next level. I don’t really remember what happened there, but the car definitely retired well decorated.

The other is Willie, the Golden Retriever we adopted when I was 13. I had spent years and years begging for a dog. My mom was having none of it. I doubt Robin particularly wanted a dog, but he recognized this was important enough to me and maybe a formative experience for a boy. He began to subtly take my side and work on wearing my mom down. She couldn’t withstand the two fronted battle and eventually relented. I loved that dog, but in the end I think my mom and Robin probably loved him even more. Robin and I were right!

Of course there are many more stories I could tell about Robin’s generosity, humility, embarrassing dancing and humor, but I’ll stop there. 

I am sad that Robin had so little good time with his grandsons. Both for him, and for Dean and Owen. I hope he knows his love, his influence and legacy will continue through me to them.

Autumn Sonnet
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one:
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
Ane call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure - if I can let you go.
- May Sarton
 

Death is Nothing At All

Death is nothing at all. 
It does not count. 
I have only slipped away into the next room. 
Nothing has happened. 

Everything remains exactly as it was. 
I am I, and you are you, 
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. 
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. 

Call me by the old familiar name. 
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. 
Put no difference into your tone. 
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. 
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. 
It is the same as it ever was. 
There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
What is this death but a negligible accident? 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? 
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near, 
just round the corner. 

All is well. 
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. 
One brief moment and all will be as it was before. 

- Henry Scott-Holland

I feel very fortunate to have known Robin. He was the best of buddies and a fine mentor. Of course, he and I didn’t really know each other during the very early years of our lives. But, years later, when I was able to reflect on the course of our lives, it felt that we had always been twin souls and that our lives were uncannily similar.

For instance, Robin was born in 1940 and I was born only 3 years later in 1943 – I suppose that’s not especially significant other than that we both experienced wartime England.

Perhaps more significant, we were both born close to Newcastle upon Tyne, the largest city in the North-East of England yet both of us ended our careers 5000 miles away in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

During our teenaged years, Robin and I both attended local (though different) all-boys schools then completed our formal education at British universities. Both Robin and I graduated with BSc and PhD degrees specializing in Metallurgy – a subject not well known in US universities at that time. The similarities in our education could be considered an interesting coincidence but realize that Robin and I did not physically meet until several years later.

The first time we actually met was in 1971 at the home of Bob Cairns, a mutual friend who, at the time, was working close to New York City. It was almost a year later that I contacted Robin – by that time he was working at SRI in Menlo Park, California. To cut a long story short, Robin helped me to find the perfect job at SRI. After working at SRI for seven years, Robin transferred in 1978 to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), situated only a few miles away in Palo Alto, California. Needless to say, I followed my buddy to EPRI about a year later. And so the coincidences continued!

To summarize, Robin and I had similar birth places, similar schooling, similar fields of technical specialization, and similar job experiences. But that’s not all we shared. We rekindled our interest in sporting activities. For instance, we played on the SRI softball team, cycled to and from work, and backpacked together in the Sierra (sometimes with our friend, Mike Torgersen). Most important of all, Robin and I became interested in running, not just noon-time “jogs” but competitive track events too. The EPRI team would train all year and run against neighboring corporate teams in “The Corporate Cup Relays” events which were held twice per year. For such a small team, EPRI had a remarkably effective running team and often walked away with several medals and even 1st Place cups.

One item I must not forget is that, in 1989, I had the pleasure of serving as best man at Robin and Anne’s wedding and, true to form, two years later Robin served as best man at our wedding!

Robin, thank you for enriching my life and for being such a close buddy.

You are greatly missed.         

Robin & I were exact contemporaries at Cambridge, matriculating in 1959 & graduating in 1962. Although we were at the same college, Gonville & Caius, we did not meet during our first year since we had rooms in different parts of the college & mixed in different circles of friends. But we came together in our second year when we had to move out into ‘digs’ & found ourselves staying in a Caius house in Glisson Road supervised by the notorious Mrs Pinner. Robin & Peter Hill had rooms on the ground floor, while Bill Henson & I had rooms on the first floor. Although we came & went at various times we all tended to rush out at about ten to nine each morning to get to whichever lectures we were attending.

Maybe it was my northern boy’s inferiority complex in the presence of southern companions, but it seemed to me that Robin was more worldly & ‘cool’ than I was - he attended concerts in London & talked knowingly about Mahler symphonies.

It is quite true that Robin & Peter constructed speakers & record players in their rooms for their friends (how they hid the sawdust & solder on the carpet from Mrs Pinner I’ll never know).

After we graduated Robin stayed on to work for his doctorate & I started work with Procter & Gamble in, by coincidence, Newcastle upon Tyne. But after I’d passed my driving test & got a car I quite often went back to Cambridge to see friends & attend parties, & Robin provided a convenient floor to sleep on.

There was a definite shortage of female students at the university, but there were plenty of student nurses at Addenbrooks Hospital who were much more fun. I dated a particularly pretty girl but she soon got bored with me & moved on to my friend Robin. Unfortunately she got bored with him as well & married one of his friends, but not before she’d introduced him to one of her friends, Diane, who Robin subsequently married. I didn’t attend their wedding but I did visit them in Philadelphia in 1969 while on a business trip to the States. I remember sitting, very cramped, in the rear of his Chevy on a trip to Atlantic City. Subsequently I also stayed with Robin & Anne in Menlo Park.

Robin was always a very positive, friendly & cheerful sort of chap & his knowledge & expertise sat lightly on his shoulders. He led a good life & made many people very happy.