May is around the corner as you read this, but it is written in February with temperatures below zero and with a foot and a half of snow at the door. Kinda like our sophomore year, when the Wide World of Sports arrived at Winter Carnival and we froze our dates’ eyes closed. Seems like old times.


Tony Rodolakis died in January. Jim Nolan sent me the following: “As we mourn Tony’s passing my memory focuses on his enthusiasm for life. Earlier his serious study of physics was complemented by a sense of humor and joie de vivre rivaling Zorba’s. Later he courageously battled a serious illness without conceding surrender for more than five decades. Altogether a life worth remembering and we do.” Lenny Schmolka added this remembrance: “How very sad. That Tony fought for so long and with such courage only compounds the sadness and the loss.” 


A bunch of us went to visit Tony a year or so ago in Springfield, Massachusetts, near where he lived, in a hospital, for many years. It is difficult to describe what the Intelligent Designer can do to one of his elegant creations by smiting him with MS; Steven Hawking comes to mind. As do the first lines of a childhood poem: “He drew a circle to keep us out/ Heretic rebel, a thing to flout/ But wit and Tony had the will to win/ They drew a circle that took us in!” And so he did with the strength of Job. Don Belcher, Bill Langly and Bill Danforth paid the class’ respects at his funeral. 


I’ll bet you didn’t know this about Tony. He developed the first quantitative stock options trading program and published it in his book, Options on a Shoestring, in 1976. His groundbreaking research led to a new field of study in economics.


I know that nuggets like the last paragraph lurk in the minds of many of you but for reasons of shyness or sloth you share them not with your correspondent. I am loath to call and hector you because I hate to be called and hectored myself. I implore you to step in the spotlight and share a bit of news. 


To quote Samuel Pepys, a far, far better diarist than I: “And so to bed.”


—John M. Mitchell, 300 Grove St. 14, Rutland, VT 05701; jmm00033@comcast.net