Marilyn Hoskin
Marilyn Hoskin has been Dean of the
College of Liberal Arts since 1995. Her
association with Bob covered the years in which he served as chair of the
Geography Department, and involved continuous work to maintain and improve the
Department’s programs at UNH.
I am honored to be able to speak in proud
remembrance of Bob LeBlanc. I share
with all who had the good fortune to know Bob an immeasurable sense of loss and
an imperfectly defined ability to respond.
Although words often fail us because they are truly inadequate
expressions of how we feel, in reality, words are what we academics do, so
please permit me to speak as a citizen of the University in fond recognition of
an exquisite colleague. Let me speak
for the literally thousands of students Bob touched in ways we are only now
beginning to comprehend, and let me speak for scores of faculty and staff who
had the privilege of working with a genuinely collegial colleague. And I can’t help but want to speak for the
many people whose pets have had the luxury of dedicated care from the
remarkable veterinarian of the family.
We share a loss that is enormous.
Others
have known Bob for upwards of 30 years in all the roles he played as a teacher,
scholar, and willing participant in the life of the University. I knew him for a much shorter time, but it
did not take long to understand the kind of person he was. He was in many ways an ideal, the kind of
faculty member who did what he did because he loved both his discipline and the
sense of discovery that it could mean to students of all ages. I knew he was a popular and effective
teacher from the first round of student evaluations I saw in 1995, but I didn’t
fully appreciate how extensive his influence was until I began to read the
tributes from students who had him ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Let me encourage you to visit the website,
which has grown more than Topsy in the last week; it offers only a glimpse of
their sentiments, but it is itself a stunning portrait of a man who took the
academic hand of thousands of students and helped them become curious about the
world and committed to making themselves international citizens. Their words are the highest kind of honor
our world of teaching and scholarship knows:
“…he inspired me to be better than
I thought I could be…”
“…he opened my eyes to the world.”
“…no matter how many students were
waiting or how late it was, he made time for me.”
“…he made me think in ways I hadn’t
even dreamed I could think.”
Or, my personal favorite:
“I know he is a good professor and
all that, but he is so much more.”
For all faculty who would be thrilled with just the
“good professor and all that” part, we know how very significant these tributes
are.
Bob
was a kinetic figure, continuously planning new initiatives that would increase
interest in Geography, or constructing trips that would make him better able to
engage students in a world they would stretch to explore. As chair of his department, he was tenacious
in representing its interests and compelling in the case he would make for
consideration of its needs. But he was
always – always – attentive to the larger picture of University
goals. His world, I have to think, was
the bigger picture, and I will always be enormously grateful for the perspective
he brought to me and others.
Bob
did not use retirement as a vehicle to distance himself from either work, or
study, or obligation. He remained a
presence for the University in ways we depend upon to continue the links
between students, faculty, and the communities around us. His place in the University, in Durham, and
in the professional circles of geography and international travel was timeless
and constant, and the choices he followed in academic life and retirement
remain a model from which all of us can learn.
The University was a big part of Bob’s life, and the University is a
much better place for that fact. If
when we who have not retired can someday claim some fraction of the
accomplishment and sense of place in our community that Bob achieved in his, we
should be very, very proud.
William Wallace
Bill Wallace shared over forty
years of association with Bob. As a
faculty member in Geography since 1957, Bill knew him as a student, colleague,
and friend. Bill served as chair until
he retired in 1997.
Our Long Association
My first contact with Bob came in
the spring of 1959 when he was a student in my course on the Geography of Anglo
America. Evidently, his interest in
geography survived the experience, for he received the grade of ‘A’’; this in a
time when an ‘A’ was a mark of distinction, not an entitlement.
Bob
joined me as the second geography faculty member at UNH in 1963, and we worked
together to establish and develop the program in the University. And so we were colleagues for and friends
for 38 years. As we all know, these two
terms are not necessarily synonyms.
I
recall that when Bob was under consideration for the job I phoned my friend
John Borchert, who was one of Bob’s mentors at the University of Minnesota, and
asked him for his evaluation. In those
distant days, the opinions of those whom you knew were more important than the
letters of recommendation. John said,
“Bob is a good person to have around.”
John was right.
Bob
and I had adjoining offices for most of the years that we spent together. The door connecting these offices was almost
always open. Nearly every morning we
would discuss the condition of the world.
Bob, who was an early riser and a devout reader of The Boston Globe,
had usually got through the paper before I came in.
Over those many years, we
discussed:
John F. Kennedy’s
assassination
LBJ’s Great Society
programs
The Civil Rights
Movement
The war in Viet Nam
Richard Nixon and
Détente
Richard Nixon and
Watergate
Jimmy Carter and the
Iran Hostage Crisis
Reagan and the
Conservative Revolution
Reagan and the
Iran-Contra scandal
The Gulf War
Clinton – a new
democrat
Clinton and a new
level of sexuality in the White House
The appointment of
George Bush II
In our profession we shared many commonalities. Our interest in geography derived from an
interest in places and landscapes and how they developed. We eschewed the ‘quantitative revolution’. We spoke the same language as we worked in
economic, cultural, and historical geography.
We attended more than 50 professional meetings
together. In geography, there are
regional meetings in the fall and national meetings in the spring. So we traveled many thousands of miles and many
days together, from St. Johns in Newfoundland to San Diego and from Seattle to
Miami and dozens of places in between.
Bob was always a good companion, accepting the frustrations of travel
with good humor and always jovial at the cocktail hour that marked the end of
the day.
Bob’s Personal History
Bob was born on October 28, 1930 in
a French neighborhood in Nashua. Both
of his parents were French and his education began in Catholic schools in which
the language of instruction was French.
But Bob early desired to move into a larger world. He did not want to spend his life as a
French-Canadian on the south side of Nashua.
So he insisted on entering public schools and graduated from Nashua High
School in 1949. He told me that as a
boy he often rode his bicycle to the railroad station to see the train from
Montreal come in. In the 1930’s, this
was Nashua’s most direct contact with the outside world, and it was also his
link to his ancestral homeland. We
should recall that the railroad was open to Montreal by 1850 and that the
French, unlike other immigrants, came by train, not by boat or wagon.
After
graduation in 1949, Bob enlisted in the Air Force, which offered a ticket to
adventure and far places. In the
following four years, he traveled all over the United States, as well as to
Puerto Rico, Greenland, and most important, to England. Bob fell in love with England, becoming a
Franco-American Anglophile – a rare species, indeed! Bob returned to England many times in the years that followed,
most recently this past March when he spent ten days in London. He and Andi had planned to walk in Cornwall,
but the hoof and mouth disease diverted him to the streets of his favorite
city.
Bob was discharged from the Air Force in 1953 and
entered the University of New Hampshire in September of that year. At the University, he came under the
influence of Donald H. Chapman, a greatly respected glacial geologist, and
decided to major in geology. He took
time out from his studies to work on a glacial research team in Norway and
later spent the winter of 1957-1958 on an ice island in the Arctic as a
research assistant with the Air Force Cambridge Research Center. Evidently this experience exhausted his
interest in geology in general and the polar region in particular, for he then
changed his major to history and never returned to the arctic. Thus, when Bob graduated in June of 1959 he
had studied geology, history, and geography.
He entered the graduate program in geography at the
University of Minnesota in the fall of 1959.
This was a fortunate choice because Minnesota was then emerging as one
of the best departments in the country.
Fred Lukermann became his mentor and Bob began his work in historical
geography. He did well. He was named a Tozer Foundation Fellow in
1962 and won the first Ralph H. Brown Prize for the best publication by a
University of Minnesota Graduate Student in Geography in 1963.
LeBlanc’s master’s degree thesis was on the Acadian
migrations and his doctoral dissertation was on the development of
manufacturing in New England in the nineteenth century. These two themes were to characterize his
work. For the first twenty years he
worked in historical geography and then he returned to his roots and
concentrated on Canadian studies. In
these years he was active in Franco-American affairs, working with the New
Hampshire Council for the Humanities and the Franco-American Cultural Center in
Manchester. Bob was also active in
professional organizations. He was the
founder of the Eastern Historical Geography Association and was also deeply
involved in the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, serving
as Secretary, Vice-President, and then President in 1975. He received the Distinguished Service Award
of this organization in 1988.
Bob as a person
But we are here to remember Bob as a person…
Generous…to a fault. Always very hospitable, even when he was an instructor and poor
as a church mouse. Often when we were
at professional meetings with several people around the dinner table, the
Yankees and other Calvinists were hard at work trying to determine who should
pay for what. Bob would put a few extra
dollars on the table so that we could be on our way.
Open…Bob was one of the least devious persons that I
have known. He would not have been a
good poker player because he always put all of his cards on the table.
Friendly…Bob was a true ecumenicist. He once told me that he wanted to embrace
everyone. The size of this gathering
confirms that.
Helpful…Bob was always willing to do more than his
share and wanted to help everyone.
Optimistic…Unlike me, Bob did not accept Murphy’s
Law – if anything can go wrong, it will. His view was that things will come right. The world needs optimists. They are right about 80% of the time.
Youthful in spirit…Bob never lost the enthusiasm of
youth. He retained a zest for life and
adventure. I cannot imagine him growing
old.
Details…not Bob’s strong point. He focused on the big picture, not the fine
print. I recall a conversation in his
office a few days before he and Andi were to be married. He was talking to Bob Adams about plans for
the wedding. Finally, Adams said, “By
the way, where is this wedding to take place?” LeBlanc replied, “At your house, of course.” Adams said, “Hell, we just moved in. We don’t have any furniture and the house is
torn apart.” At that point, I said,
“Why not at our house?” Which is what
we did. And it seems to have worked,
for they lived happily ever after.
Conclusion
Bob’s departure was a great loss to all of us. But we should take some comfort in the
knowledge that he was doing what he liked when he died; riding a plane to a
geography meeting…This time it was UAL flight 175 to Los Angeles, California.
Robert Adams
Robert Adams was a faculty
colleague of Bob LeBlanc, as professor in the Geography Department for
twenty-seven years. He retired in 1994.
One of Bob's Great Loves:
I've
been honored to say a few words about one of Bob's great loves -- the love of
food and all that surrounded it.
For most of us, food is something
we eat when we're hungry and, if we have time, to occasionally enjoy. For Bob, food was an ever-present passion --
something to be researched and studied, something to be cooked with thoughtful
expertise, something to be savored in the eating, something to be shared with others.
I'd
like to share with you some of my memories of "dinner at the
LeBlanc's" -- events that many of us have been part of and events that Bob
truly cherished.
Bob
absolutely loved to cook, but I never regarded him as a cook. To me, a cook is someone who reads a recipe,
faithfully follows the directions and "cooks" it. I'm a cook and it's largely a brainless
process, devoid of imagination and creativity.
To the best of my knowledge, Bob never faithfully followed any recipe --
certainly never more than once. He
loved to read them, but following was another matter. Spurred by his knowledge of food and his imagination and
creativity, he was always tinkering with recipes. I'm not talking about recipes from Joe's Diner and Take-Out here,
I'm talking about the recipes of Childs, Beard, Prudhomme and other eminent
chefs. No one was immune from his
tinkering and his tinkerings always turned out exquisitely.
To me
Bob was a chef -- someone with an intimate knowledge of the materials, tools,
and techniques of the trade, complemented by a creative imagination. He was a culinary artist. When the LeBlanc's had dinner parties,
everyone loved to watch Bob do his thing.
It all looked so easy, so simple.
At least when I was there, there were no open recipe books, no timers,
no measuring cups and spoons. Bob
didn't cook in standard units of measurement, he cooked in piles, bunches,
handfuls, pinches and splashes. While
simultaneously cooking two or three dishes, he would sip his martini and be
engaged in conversation with everyone there.
Occasionally he would turn away to check, give a stir, or add
something. It looked almost haphazard,
but it wasn't -- it was precise and practiced.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
For a
period of something like 15-20 years, this all took place in a tiny galley
kitchen with a 4-foot-wide aisle.
Sufficient in size for the chef but not for the chef, his wife, and all
the guests. Nevertheless that's where
everyone gathered. To say it was
crowded is an understatement. In order
to move you had to twist and squirm your way.
Needless to say strangers didn't remain strangers for long at the
LeBlanc's!
Once
the preparation was finished, the sharing part of the meal began. Andy prepared the table with beautiful place
settings she had dragged home from some far corner of the globe, often over the
protestations of Bob. And the candles
were lit. There were always
candles. Lots of candles. Candles in the candelabra over the
table. Candles on the table and candles
on all the flat surfaces around the table.
It was like dining in a forest fire.
Then the wine was
brought to the table. There was always
wine. Lots of wine. Bob was also a student of wines, but not in
the usual sense. Bob didn't study the
world's great vineyards, wines and vintages, he was a student of "best
buy" wines. Unlike with his
cooking, when it came to wine, quantity seemed to have the edge over
quality. A $50 bottle of superb wine
was understandably out of the question; Bob wisely preferred five $10 bottles
of good wine, or, even better, ten bottles of $5 wine. It didn't matter; it was always good.
The
food was presented and we'd fall quiet as we savored the wonderful dishes Bob
had prepared. But soon the traditional
table conversation would begin to build.
There was always conversation.
Lots of conversation. Bob served
as moderator, pot-stirrer, trouble-maker and referee. The word "lively" doesn't do justice to those
conversations. I don't think any one
word could. They ranged from
philosophical to trivial, from intense to casual, from rational to
off-the-wall, from hilarious to tearful -- all in one evening. They were wonderful and they went on and on
until someone said, "my God, it's 1:00 a.m." But those conversations didn't evaporate
when you left; they stayed with you for days and weeks. Unfortunately, for me that often meant that
I had days and weeks to repeatedly wonder "what in the world possessed me
to say what I did that incited the riot."
Eventually, I'd just blame it on the $5 wine.
Bob
loved every moment of those evenings -- the cooking, the food, the wine, the
conversation; he must have, because he and Andy kept hosting them over and over
and over again through the years.
As
many of you know that tiny galley kitchen has been replaced by a room designed
by Bob and Andy that was recently added to their home. It is not a kitchen, not a dining room, not
a sitting or gathering room. It is all
of those things. It's a magnificent
room. It's a celebration room -- a room
in which to celebrate food, to celebrate family and friends, and now, a room in
which to celebrate Bob and the things that were dear to him.
Bob and Andy:
I've
thought about Bob a lot over the past 10 days, as we all have -- about what he
believed in, about what he stood for, about what he liked and disliked, about
his admirable qualities -- in sum, about who he was. However, my mind, rather than focusing upon Bob, keeps evoking
thoughts and images of Bob and Andy.
But upon reflection, that's as it should be, for that's as it was --
they were part of each other.
I'm
reminded of a poem by the noted TV journalist, Jack Perkins. The poem is included in a book entitled
ACADIA where, in verse and photographs of his own, he pays homage to Acadia
National Park. The poem is accompanied
by a photograph of a pond that is held, as if cradled, by the surrounding
hills, but the hills, in turn, are held by the pond, in their reflection upon
its surface.
The
poem is titled, "A Pond, A Marriage."
At Bubble Pond,
the hills contain the lake, as Nature wills.
But look
again: the waters of the lake contain
the hills.
I think this
mutuality is what a marriage is:
No longer hers as
only hers, or his as only his.
Instead, once man
and woman as husband and wife are bound,
From then on,
each contains the other;
In each, the
other is found.
Today and in the days ahead, as we remember Bob and
honor him for who he was, we would do well to be mindful of who Andy is
-- for in her, much of the essence of Bob remains with us.
Alasdair
Drysdale is currently professor and chair of the UNH Geography Department. He has worked with Bob for all of his
twenty-five years at the University.
Baudelaire
observed that the cat explores his habitat before he sleeps.
When Bob was a
little boy growing up in Nashua, he once left a note for his mother saying:
“I’ve gone to see the ocean.” This
eight-year-old left the house and peddled off on his bike, undaunted by
distance and whatever obstacles lay in his path to adventure. In spirit, the Bob I knew for twenty-five
years was very much the same person to the end, retaining a passionate
curiosity about the world beyond his doorstep, exploring, and above all
celebrating, its varied physical and cultural terrain. Throughout his rich life, Bob found immense
joy in discovering places and in observing the ways in which different cultures
shape and give character to the unique landscapes they inhabit. Bob deciphered human and natural landscapes
in much the same way that the rest of us read books, caressing their surfaces
with his eyes, looking for meaning, discovering connections, and finding
pleasure and delighting in their magical and intimate surprises. He marveled at this magnificent, variegated
mosaic that is our collective home, poking around the back roads of rural
Mississippi, the monasteries of Tibet, the bogs of the Canadian Arctic, the
game reserves of Botswana, and the vegetable markets of Morocco, no less than
the mill towns of New England. Bob was
no ordinary traveler: when he visited London, he didn’t waste his time going to
all the usual haunts—he explored the immigrant Bangladeshi neighborhoods of the
East End. When he visited large cities,
he would sometimes take a subway to the end of the line and walk back to the
center, cutting exploration transects through their diverse neighborhoods. Bob wanted to see everything with his own
eyes. Asking him for advice about where
to visit before taking a trip could be quite perilous, unless you were prepared
to do a lot of walking.
To be sure, some
of Bob’s peripatetic curiosity was a characteristic of his chosen, or perhaps I
should say ordained, profession: geography.
Once, he told me, he clambered up a hill overlooking St. John’s,
Newfoundland, looking for the best place to take a picture of the harbor, no
doubt to show his students the importance of its site or to illustrate some
other concept. At the summit he bumped
into someone else, similarly attired and doing exactly the same thing. They both looked at each other with raised
eyebrows and inquired, simultaneously, “Geographer?”
But Bob’s
wanderlust and intrepid explorations went far beyond those of most of his
colleagues. Let me tell you some of the
places where Bob traveled in the last decade of his life, sometimes by himself,
often with Andi, and frequently escorting Interhostel groups: Switzerland, France, Poland, Spain, Sweden,
Greece, Britain, the Czech Republic, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China, Morocco,
Peru, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore, Mexico, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Turkey. And I’m sure this is not a complete
list. He was scheduled to depart for
Argentina this Tuesday, The last time I saw him, we hunched over a large map of
India, which he planned to visit in January, and talked with excitement about
his itinerary. Travel was one of Bob’s
great passions, and one of the bases for my close friendship with him. I often teased him because he usually
planned three or four trips ahead, not one as most of us do. After I became a parent a few years ago and
reconciled myself to a more sedentary existence, I urged him on vicariously and
enviously. His desk always had at least
three or four neat piles of guidebooks for different countries, not to mention
stacks of maps. His bookshelves heaved under the weight of all his travel
books. Bob embraced the Internet enthusiastically in the past couple of
years. Guess what he used it for? On the side of his filing cabinet is taped a
faded list of the 800 numbers of all the major airlines (although I suspect
that he probably had them memorized).
So complex were Bob’s travel plans that occasionally even he was
confused about them. Earlier this year
he and Andi planned a trip to England to walk in Cornwall. Meanwhile he impulsively bought tickets to Rome. When he received them, he realized to his
chagrin that he had booked two entirely different trips for the same dates—not
an error that most of us are ever likely to make. He loved to cook meals inspired by his travels, sometimes in the
process burning off the roof of my gentle mouth, which is more accustomed to
the, how shall I put this, discrete flavors of Scottish haute cuisine.
Shortly after
Bob’s death, I came across this verse in the Qur’an:
O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male
and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each
other."
al-Qur'an 49:13
Bob more than
kept his part of the bargain, devoting his life to knowing the nations and
tribes of the world. For over
thirty-five years he shared that encyclopedic knowledge in the classroom and on
fieldtrips with thousands of students, immeasurably enriching and expanding
their world. Why are there Indians
traders in Trinidad, or Yemenis working on the boats of the Great Lakes? Bob knew, and he cared why. Why are the British Isles so wet, and
coastal Peru so dry? Bob knew, because
that is the kind of thing he thought was important. Which alphabet is used in
Azerbaijan or Pakistan, and what languages do Afghans speak? Bob knew, and he believed we should too.
What are the grievances of some Muslims and many Arabs against our
government? Bob knew, because he always
tried to understand. It fills me with
such grief and sorrow that this remarkable, gentle, and curious man, who
devoted his life to knowing and understanding the nations and tribes of the
world, should be silenced by those who did not even try.
May all of us,
like you, dear friend, explore our habitats before we sleep.
Bob, thank
you for twenty-five years of wonderful friendship. I will miss you dearly.
Julien Olivier
Julien
Olivier knew Bob through his work with the American Canadian French Cultural
Commission.
Bob Le Blanc was from Nashua, N.H. His were hard working
people who had migrated from Canada. Bob was a Franco-American of Acadian
descent, folks who had settled in the Canadian Maritimes in the 17th
century, pioneered there, known persecution and exile. Acadians are a hardy
lot. So was Bob.
When he left Nashua, he was of the minority of Franco-Americans
of his generation who went to college. Even fewer sought, as he did, degrees in
secular institutions. Today, that course is normal for Franco-Americans, but
Bob was a forerunner.
Yet he never forgot his origins. Bob’s French heritage
was, for him, both a personal and a professional passion.
Bob traced the Le Blanc genealogy, and he tried to
understand what made Franco-Americans tick. Professor Le Blanc’s maps of the
Acadian deportations helped many to visualize those tragic 18th
century events. His articles on the deportation, published in both Canada and
the United States, shed light on that atrocity. His research into his
Franco-American roots led to publication on such topics as colonization,
repatriation and the Québec education of the Franco-American elite. So many
apparently esoteric subjects; but, for persons seeking to understand their
heritage, very important ones.
In the late 1970s, Bob participated in a statewide lecture
series sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council. The topic was
Franco-Americans in New Hampshire. Given his specialty, Bob’s lecture focused
on immigration patterns. One of the stops in this series was Nashua; the venue
was the nursing home in which Bob’s mother was a resident. That series gave
birth to the N.H. Humanities Council Resource Center; and Bob’s presentation,
entitled “The French-Canadian Migration to New England,” is still listed.
Bob was an incorporator of the Franco-American Centre in
Manchester and could often be found doing research in the Centre’s library and
archives. As directed by then-UNH President Dale Nitzschke, he initiated the
Franco-American Club on this campus. He was a member of the Franco-American
Historical Society and was instrumental in organizing the only meeting of that
group ever held on the UNH campus, a bilingual event necessitating equipment
for simultaneous interpretation.
Because he valued knowledge more than the conventional
norms of academia, Professor Le Blanc sought information and advice where it
could be found, whether in traditional sources of research or directly from the
people whose culture and history he sought to understand. He spoke to
colleagues around the world, but he also called on the American Canadian
Genealogical Society in Manchester and even phoned me on occasion to verify a
reference, get an opinion or check out a fact.
It is fitting that Andrea and the family, in remembrance
of their husband, father and brother, have established the Robert G. Le Blanc
Memorial Fund at the UNH Foundation. This fund will be used to establish a
scholarship for students of French-Canadian descent. Bob, the kid from Nashua,
would have liked that.
Tim Clark
Tim Clark became part of
the LeBlanc circle of friends after taking his cat to the veterinary clinic of
Bob’s wife, Andrea. He established a
long friendship, which, coupled with his presence as a major figure in the
culture of New England, made him a perfect choice to serve as host of the
memorial ceremony. After formal and
informal tributes had been completed, Tim closed the service with the following
poem, which he found to be particularly appropriate to the occasion.
From "After the Storm" by Billy
Collins
I am thinking about the dinner party,
the long table, dark bottles of Merlot,
the odd duck and Brussels sprouts,
and how, after midnight,
with all of us sprawled on the couch and
floor,
the power suddenly went out
leaving us to feel our way around
in the tenth-century darkness
until we found and lit a stash of candles
then drew the circle of ourselves a little
tighter
in this softer hula of lights
that gleamed in mirrors and on rims of glasses
while the shutters banged and the rain lashed
down.
A sweet nut of memory --
but the part that sends me whirring
in little ovals of wonder,
as the leftover clouds break apart
and the sun brightly stripes these walls,
is the part that came later,
hours after we had each carried a candle
up the shadowy staircase and gone to bed.
It was three, maybe four in the morning
when the power surged back on,
and, as if a bookmark
had been inserted into the party
when the lamps went dark,
now all the lights downstairs flared again,
and from the stereo speakers
up through the heat register
into our bedroom and our sleep
blared the sound of Jimmy Reed
singing "Baby What You Want Me to
Do"
just where he had left
off.
Tom
Carter grew up with Bob’s children and has remained a close family friend.
You'll forgive me
if I don't make eye contact with all two million of you….
Hi. I'm Tom Carter, one of the many whom Bob
LeBlanc welcomed into the warmth of his home and family over the years. I had the uncommon good fortune to grow up
in Lee within a mile of that home, and to know Bob through my relationship with
his son Kjell, my oddest friend -- excuse me, oldest friend. Well, I guess both are accurate . . .
Because I have
spent countless hours there, I was asked to share a few words about what Bob
was like at home. Describing Bob is a
daunting task, and I hope I can measure up.
I would arrive at
Bob and Andrea's home in a variety of ways -- by bicycle, a lift from my
parents or a brother, the occasional walk.
But my favorite way was to get a ride from Durham with Bob himself. Often, after enduring an impossibly rigorous
academic day at Oyster River High School, Kjell and I would unwind for a few
hours in downtown Durham, staying out of trouble, of course. Sometimes we would meet Bob at what was then
the Shop 'n Save -- now the Durham Marketplace -- where he would happily shop
for the dinner groceries. I think Bob shopped for groceries more often
than any person alive. He just had to
have fresh produce.
Other times,
Kjell and I would descend on Bob's office in James Hall at about 5
o'clock. He would greet us with his
genuine smile that you couldn't help but return. Sitting in his office, brimmed over with books, magazines, maps
and papers, Bob had the aura not of toil, but of immersion in a favorite
hobby. Even so, content with the day's
accomplishments, he would look forward to heading home. He gave you hope that you too would find
your calling and weave it seamlessly into the rest of your life.
It's hard not to
remember the Volkswagen Dasher station wagon he often drove us in. It was a diesel, and in the bitter cold, you
just prayed he could manage to start it.
With characteristic patience, he always did. I think he liked that car because it lasted forever and got
something like three hundred miles to the gallon.
Bob was famously
frugal. I'm sure he circled the globe
at least once on the money he saved on fuel.
In large part, I
blame those rides home for my addiction to National Public Radio. Not only was Bob always listening to it, he
did so at an unspeakable volume. And I
mean literally -- Kjell and I could not speak to each other. Bob's imperfect hearing had him blasting
"All Things Considered" like other people blast rock quarries. So you would sit, and listen, and your ears
would ring with new knowledge of the world.
Even when he wasn't talking, that's what being with Bob was like.
At home, Bob
continued his routines with a clamor of music, a gin and tonic, and a cyclone
of kitchen activity. The small
kitchen was the center of the LeBlanc
home, and somehow he managed to navigate its confines, dodge the family and
friends drawn there like magnets, and keep the dogs and cats from getting
underfoot. To him being the family
cook was not a chore, it was recreation and passion. He was a masterful chef, and it was always a treat for me to be
invited to his table. Dinner guests
were the rule rather than the exception.
Often, Bob had little notice that various friends of Kjell and Nissa
would be staying for dinner; yet, he could stretch any meal to accommodate us
all. He would do this without
resentment or complaint. In fact, he
often customized meals to suit our individual palates, and kept a list of salad
preferences posted on the refrigerator.
It was special to make Bob's salad list. He was also unafraid to experiment with food, and I have heard
from his daughter Nissa and his wife Andi that on rare occasions this resulted
in unappetizing dishes. Bob
good-naturedly referred to these as "gaggers." I never gagged at his table myself, and
refuse to believe it possible.
Some of my
fondest memories are of the inspired conversations at Bob's table, a place
where time seemed to stand still. The
topics, like Bob himself, ranged near and far, and all were welcome to
participate. He loved to teach what he
knew, but perhaps his favorite thing was to ask questions of people. If you students of his think his essay tests
were hard, you should have tried the oral exams at his dinner table! He sometimes had this way of turning towards
you, leaning back in his chair, stroking his beard thoughtfully, and then, with
eyes sparkling as they met yours, composing his query. His questions were never meant to embarrass,
harass, or allow him to display his own vast knowledge. He just wanted to know more, not only
empirically, but from your perspective.
He might ask me something like:
"Tom, what was it like being stationed in western Germany in the
years immediately after the wall came down and the country
reunified?" The thought would
occur to me then to head for the bathroom.
He wouldn't accept the answer "Uh, it was OK"; his curiosity
would always draw out more knowledge than you thought you had, and you were
always better for the exploration.
Often, though, his questions were personal, simple and open-ended, as
in: "How are your parents?" He listened to these answers just as
intently, because Bob was a man who loved both people and peoples.
These scenes have repeated themselves in my life
over and over again through the years, but, sadly, with less frequency as time,
distance, careers, and other obligations intervened. One tradition that has endured is the annual Holiday Smorgasbord,
an event that looms large in the landscape of my life, and one I know will
continue in his honor. I hope to be
there again, with Bob's wife Andi, his sons Kjell, John and Paul, his daughters
Nissa and Carolyn. There is so much of
Bob in all of them, he will be there too.
Eliot Shepard has been a long-time
family friend.
I
knew Bob as the father of my friends Kjell and Nissa Youngren, and
as a neighbor on Snell Road.
To my
chagrin I never had the opportunity to travel with Bob, or to attend a class of
his, or to cook properly with him. What I did get to do was to spend a great
deal of time hanging around his house, making trouble with his son and making
eyes at his daughter. I did get a few meals out of the deal as well.
As
the father of my best friend, I learned about Bob in small increments over many
years. One of my earliest recollections, probably from my first visit to
Kjell's house, was that here was a person whose interest in life and
perspectives extended so far as to actually necessitate the reading of Canadian
news magazines. My own home didn't lack in worldliness, but this discovery put
me on my back foot. Clearly this was a person who would demand certain things.
In a corner of my ten-year-old mind I might have considered bolting then and
there. But there was probably a good smell coming from the stove
and I was well hooked. This was Bob's way.
From
the beginning Andi and Bob did indeed feel comfortable displaying a vigorous
curiosity about their son's friend. Some evenings Bob was the provocateur who
would joyfully interrogate me on my adventures and my newest methods for making
life difficult for myself. When he was especially focused, his voice would
crack and go into its high register. Typically, this was not a good sign. At
these times I believe a small light-bulb behind his eyes would turn on to make
them actually twinkle, very much amplifying both his resemblance to Santa and
mine to an awkward elf.
Eventually
though, we came to be on more even footing. I began to find myself more and
more interested in experiencing other places and in cooking dinners of my own
(but not in classical music -- I did have to draw the line somewhere.) I
clearly remember the first time I realized that Bob was asking me a question
only because he wanted to hear my answer, and what's more, my advice.
I was
of course growing up. A shocking thing to have happen, but also the time when I
first looked with some objectivity at the adults around, primarily to try and
decide which parts of each to steal. I began to see Bob as a person who
stockpiled experiences not because they satisfied him, but because they
increased his appetite for even more experience. I saw the generosity of him
and his entire family to me at a time when mine was subject to other forces. I
saw a person who would always speak thoughtfully, but not so carefully as to
miss his chance. I saw the pure love he had for his wife, his children, his
life, at home and away. I saw a man who had practiced hard and
was good at being himself.
I
have had many wonderful people in my life, and I have probably plagiarized my
identity, or the identity I'd like to have, from all of them. If he noticed, I
hope Bob didn't mind being one of the people from whom I took.
Many
nights of my life I have been like a bird looking for dinner and possibly a gin
and tonic or two in the neighbor's nest. Every member of the Youngren and
LeBlanc families moved over to let me into their circle, and I am grateful to
all of them for the room. But especially to Bob and Andi, who made it plain
that they liked watching me grow up and liked helping me do it. It is a
terrific thing to give someone and I thank them both for it.