Very sad to hear about the passing of Dick Fenno. In my time at Rochester, I had a couple of interactions with him that I’ll remember fondly.

(1) I had an office on the same side of Harkness as his and it faced the library (mine was also directly across from the floor’s only single-shot bathroom). One day he popped into my office, having no idea who i was, and said “isn’t this view amazing?”

I wish I remembered the rest of the conversation more clearly, but I vividly remember him quite literally bouncing around my office and saying at some point “it’s fantastic what we get to do, isn’t it?” And boy if he isn’t right.

(2) we had @justingrimmer out for a week at Rochester, who’s first book was on home style, and I thought why not invite Dick out for lunch. We all went out with Gerald Gamm and I remember Dick just relishing all of the chatter about research and the field and so on

But what I remember the most was when he said that if he were starting over today, he’d be using all of the whiz-bang methods that we were using. I was surprised! Here was the original “soak and poke” master saying he saw the immense value in quantitative work.

That’s what I took from my insanely brief interactions with Dick Fenno: a deep sense of intellectual curiosity, joy, and openness.