March 28, 2010. Chevy Chase, Md. Richard.

Richard and Marilyn were with us on the horse back riding trip in Alberta along with the rest of our friends. From the time we left Mount Norquey in Banff, those sixteen people were together all day, along with the two guides. Not another soul crossed our path for the ten days we spent together, except for the cooks at the camp sites. All day we rode, except to stop for lunch. At the end of the day, we set up our bed rolls in the tents provided, then ate and drank and talked all evening, every evening. By the end of the trip we had talked about everything under the sun and we got to know everyone well. Except for Richard. He went fly fishing so we never got to know him at all. He is very unassuming as well and is not prone to intrude into our racket. Since that trip, we have met with Marilyn and Richard at the ranch, in Nova Scotia and at the farm and have discovered a thing or two about Richard, all very interesting.

In his professional life, he had three different jobs. He first graduated from the Medical School in Galveston with a PhD and MD degree. His PhD was in Chemistry. First job was teaching and research at the Medical School in Dallas, eventually ending up as the Dean. One day he decided that he was not doing any medicine, which he had first set out to do, so he quit, and moved to Frederickburg, Texas, as a General Practitioner working in a group of Doctors. He loved it, and ended up as the Medical Director of the Hospital. Clearly he was good at organization.. All along he owned a piece of property in Colorado, with two lakes, so every time he had vacation, he checked on his trout in the lakes. At age sixty, he decided to move to the mountains, and turn the trout into a lake trout farm, selling the fish to the Denver restaurants. He was very successful perhaps because he had a Chemistry background and was able to keep the trout free of disease. After Marilyn retired as a Doctor, she delivered the fish to Denver, and they still spend six months in the mountains of Colorado. Now he had donated his land to the state, along with all the trout and they will live there as long as they are able. He no longer raises the trout and now is learning to do nothing except travel and read. It is common to meet successful people and it is always interesting to me to figure out how it happened, but it is very unusual to meet one person who has had three different and distinct jobs and excelled at all three.

I still can not figure out how none of us spent any time talking with Richard when we were all together in the horse back riding trip. We missed out on a lot of good conversations.