To those who never had the pleasure of meeting him, these reflections tell you a lot about Larry as a person. They also demonstrate one of the payoffs to academic work. It is, surely, a labor of love, but there’s another intangible reward: a fine teacher and scholar changes the way students think, advances the frontiers of knowledge, and stimulates colleagues to do the same. And so he or she lives on, in some sense. Clearly, Larry does; we’ll miss his presence, but his impact on us was large, and real, and good.

I’ve noticed that the people who tend to hang around WOW Journal are really sharp cookies. Even if you never met Larry, consider emulating him and putting your brainpower to work as a teacher or a scholar. It’s a wonderful life.