Good-bye Bob

This was the last summer for one of our favorite researchers, Bob Flather. A man who never married (though he seems to enjoy women... quite a bit), he has spent all but one of the last41 summers here in the Park. He has been in to the library every day since 2003, except for our move during th summer of 2004.
He's a crusty-old fart that took some time warming up to. Used to the loos manner in which the library and archives used to be run, he was offended when we started professionalizing the access to the books and papers in the library and archives. "Why can't it just stay th way it used to be?" was a frequent question in early years. Eventually, he realized that we weren't trying to bedevil him, only to ensure that the items in our collections would be around for years of researchers to come.
We will miss Bob. Even the days when we had to watch closely to determine that he was in fact just napping ("Oh, thank God! He's breathing). The past few years he's gotten more and more withdrawn while his hearing has gone downhil and it became harder for him to hear in restaurant situations.