In Memoriam |
TRENT CONTENTS Association President's Message The Higher Cost of Higher Education Are You Being Served? Discounts and benefits for alumni Course profile - Women in the Greek and Roman World Alumni Staff Profile - Doug Brown '71 Which Way Is Up? - Investment strategies in difficult times |
Remembering Bob Annett Gordon Johnston I can't remember now who suggested to me Bob's name as a possible Senior
Tutor for Otonabee College way back in the middle of my term as College
Head, but I am permanently indebted to her or him, not only for Bob's exemplary
service in that role but also for the opportunity it gave me to get to know
him. As it turns out, I have been both his predecessor and his successor
as Head of College, and feel as a result I know less about him as a chemist and a teacher; I do know that he was always part of that humane group of scientists at Trent for whom their science is a part of their humanity, and not a specialized function off to one side. His expertise in Chemistry was an extension of who he was as a human being. I also know that he often heard from his former students, and had visits from them when they would express their gratitude to him, and their affection for him. And I know that in his office there were strange and beautiful objects - visual teaching aids; but what they were meant to teach I have no idea. I loved them as toys and as sculpture, and didn't expect to follow Bob in understanding their meaning. These days I am using Bob's computer on the desk of the Head of College, and have discovered there strange and beautiful graphics, which like the models, I admire without understanding. There is one formula Bob did share with us in the College Office, shared almost compulsively (if Bob could be described as compulsive about anything).It was the formula for calculating "the magic number": at a certain time of year, beginning during the summer and becoming more and more urgent as we approached the fall. No, it was not the number of rustication appeals or the number of first-year applicants for residence. It was back in those heady days when the Blue Jays had a crack at the pennant, and the magic number was How many wins by them and losses by other teams were necessary for them to be in the pennant race. Sometimes, cryptically, he would merely mention a number, and we were expected to understand, and approve. What else have I found, moving back into his office? Cartoons, plenty of them. He loved to see our pretensions exploded; he loved jokes of all kinds, even bad ones, especially bad ones. There were also newspaper clippings, always of Otonabee College students. From the clippings and from his correspondence, I know that he took endless enormous pride in the accomplishments of our students, sounding often, when he spoke of them, like a doting father. This role was clearly a spillover from the fact that he was a doting father; there was one subject he was always willing, even eager, to talk about, and that was Chris and Mark: where they were and what they were doing. The doting father role is closely related to his role as videographer. Many students have pointed out that when they arrived at Otonabee College, they moved without interruption from the visual field in front of their fathers' videocameras to the visual field in front of Bob's videocamera. The only false impression Bob ever created as a Head of College was his relative invisibility in the events of college life, and that was only because he was always the one taking the pictures. He was, you see, central to the College without being in the spotlight, without seeking the spotlight, preferring rather to avoid it, and to cast light on others. The other place he liked to be which was also out of view is under water. The other subject he was always happy to talk about was scuba diving. He loved the training of others; he loved his exotic field trips and vacations, but he also loved diving in familiar waters, local waters. Bob could find treasures anywhere. What occurs to me as I think about him now is that he was in many aspects of his life an observer, a keen observer as a scientist, as a spectator and fan, as a cameraman, and as a diver. But he was equally and more importantly a participant in life, a player of the game, immersed in his life and his loves, and devoted to his loves. He was a man of great understanding, understanding many things and also knowing that there are limits to what we can understand. He is an indelible part of the university and the college he loved so faithfully. We will always be grateful. COMMON USAGE The mountain has many names: and the mountain has one name, Clouds pour down its rifts like glaciers; The mountain has any name you think of, I will not say it has a secret name, The mountain has no name.
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that we were a kind of tag-team,
slapping hands and passing the struggle off to each other, back and forth,
getting thrown occasionally, but never defeated.