Eyes for the Natural World

By Janet Humphrey ’81

Bob was my professor and lifelong friend. I know I’m one of many whose life he changed in a most profound way, infusing it with his intelligence, spirit, wit and vision. I got to housesit for him one summer while he went out on the desert trip with John Hayes and a group of students, and cared for his menagerie‚dogs, birds, fish, roving turtle (and rubber snake on the greenhouse floor that I initially assumed was an actual pet!). I told him many times that he had given me the eyes with which to see the natural world. He taught me how to look at ecosystems and how to be inquisitive, and I carried that with me wherever I traveled. I’d usually email him for his thoughts on each different environment I visited. In a typical response, Bob said of Ecuador, “I went to the Galapagos with buddies and had a brief stop on the mainland…including a short trip to a nectar feeding reserve at 11.5 K feet. Fuchsias in bloom and saber-billed hummers with bills as long as the body.” He never stopped learning and teaching. I am so grateful to have known him and privileged to have called him my friend.