I first met Bob about 1957 or 1958, when I was in elementary school and Bob was a young assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Florida. Bob's wife, Kay, and my mother were first cousins and had been very close since they were children.
With Bob's passing we have lost a true giant in the world of higher education. Whether as professor, dean, provost, or acting president, he shaped the landscape of higher education in Florida and beyond, and he touched innumerable lives.
Few human beings have had a more profound influence on my own life than Bob Bryan. It was he who encouraged me to attend UF in 1965 when I was a callow and undecided 17-year-old. I cannot even begin to count the myriad examples of his sage advice and influence over the course of many years. Above all, it was thanks to Bob that I decided, with his strong encouragement, to follow in his footsteps and become an academic myself. After receiving my PhD at Stanford I taught modern European and German history for 43 years at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. In my retirement address last year I mentioned his enduring impact upon my personal and professional life.
Bob was an expert on the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century. Thus it seems apposite, on this occasion, to quote from John Donne's celebrated "Meditation XVII": "When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”
Bob was also an avid angler. Thus it seems even more fitting to conclude with a quotation from Donne's contemporary, Izaak Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler": "I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing."
Thank you, Bob, for a life well and truly lived.
David E. Barclay
Largo, Florida
