Rodney Shaw

Memories of a great friend over more than three decades

Above: As teenagers (well, not too long afterwards!). A group faculty picture taken at the 1979 AAPM Summer School in Medical Physics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Bob, second from left, writer, fourth from left.

Bob and I met in the mid-seventies, when our mutual technical interests led to us being together at some of the earlier medical-imaging meetings. From then on we regularly met, corresponded and otherwise visited with each other. Our various technical debates and general conversations often went long into the wee hours. Whereas we loved to disagree on the ‘small stuff’, all over the place, we inevitably agreed on the important ‘big stuff’. In fact Bob was one of the last folks I knew with whom it was possible to have an entirely civilized discussion on societal, economic and political matters, even when there was wide philosophical divergence. I like to think that this was because we had both been raised in the classical tradition of academic debate; a far cry from some of the contentious shouting matches that sometime seem to pass for the intellectual forum in modern times.

A running joke between us became who could ‘outtalk the other by the widest margin’. This 1981 picture shows Bob easily winning one of these bouts. At the time I was urging him to turn around and take a look at the most spectacular view in Pennsylvania, but he insisted that first he had much more to say, and never did see the view before we were back in the car, and away …

Above, Bob winning yet another of these contests, this time while we were at the reception of a technical conference in San Francisco in the 1980s. As I remember it, he didn’t even stop talking to finish off that glass shown in his hand. We were toasting his being awarded a fellowship in IS&T, for which I had nominated him, and it was nice to be together for the occasion.

But our most memorable venue for meeting over the years became the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference. For the decade or so when it was held in Newport Beach, Bob and myself made a ritual of taking a time-out down the coast in La Jolla. The ritual started over a long leisurely lunch in the outdoor courtyard of the landmark old Valencia hotel, watching the well-heeled locals enjoying their power lunches.

After we had managed to solve all the world’s problems over lunch, and argued over fundamental questions such as whether or not Ella Fitzgerald was a better singer than Frank Sinatra, we typically then wandered the beach (above 1988) and generally enjoyed the congenial surroundings. These were times of great pleasure and companionship.

The longest-running joke between Bob and myself started with an amusing incident when he came to visit us in Rochester in 1986. The story goes roughly as follows. I was signed up for a 30k point–topoint road race, way out in the country, and Bob came out with me as a spectator. A little before the start I threw him my car keys and told him to follow the pack to the finish line almost twenty miles away, in another small rural town. A little over a couple of hours later, there he was at the finish line, but looking a bit more flustered than the occasion called for. Turns out he had taken longer to figure out the gears in my car than expected, and had lost sight of the back of the pack. After various diversions up and down lonely rural roads, he managed quite by chance to come across the runners again. Later he told me that by that time, he could have been almost anywhere in Upstate New York, and he’d despaired of ever making contact again with me that day.

He had in fact beaten me to the finish line by only a few minutes, and from then on the joke solidified into a debate of how much faster I might have had run to beat him, and how that might have been influenced by him driving a more powerful car.

The debate over which of us could cover twenty miles faster, Bob in a car or myself running, continued whenever we met. When it came to these sorts of jokes, Bob was the most good-natured and self-deprecating friend I ever met. Well, Bob was first to the finish line the most important race, and I’m sure that as the rest of us join him one by one, he’ll be the first to tell that story one last time.

Bob, rest on your laurels, and be in peace.