Submitted January 6, 2007, 4:12 PM
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With Larry's passing I feel strangely, helplessly unable to find words in which to express my admiration for him and gratitude for our friendship and there seems to me a kind of paradox in this for in real life no one could give me more of a sense of discovery and expression through words than Larry. Conversations with him were always highly stimulating and fully engaging, an exercise in intellect and a search for meanings, connections, new ideas, interpretations, a different perspective, some unforeseen understanding.They were also filled with fun and humor. However sharp his mind or critical his thought his gentler human side would never fail to appear as well. He was a man with such a big heart whose love for others and deep generosity were always apparent.
We first met in the early 60's when Cornelia and I were fellow graduate students in European history at UC Berkeley. I cannot count the number of times he and Cornelia would open their doors to me, my husband and our two children who were the same age as Joshua and Isaac. Their ongoing hospitality helped me so much to be able to pursue my doctoral studies while maintaining my young family life. We were living outside Berkeley and would spend the night with them quite often, and I have never lost that sense of their welcoming us as if we were one of their own family. This would be renewed whenever I'd return, in all the years that followed.
Later teaching jobs in New Mexico and Colorado meant for me only infrequent trips back to Berkeley but each time I came back it was as if I had never left. Larry would be standing at the top of the stairs with arms outstretched ready with his wonderfully warm embrace, inviting us with a joyful welcome into his home. The joy of reunion with Larry was a kind of magic; infectiously exuberant and lovingly generous, he made you feel like such a happy person and life itself seemed truly wonderful when you were in his presence. This is not to say we didn't have serious conversations that were certainly not all upbeat - how could they be in our present world - but Larry had a way of finding the positive in any given situation, or of at least steering us into a search for sight of an opening ahead.
And so it was, also, during a walk he and I took one July morning in 2004 from their house (where I was spending a glorious week visiting Larry and Cornelia) to the Sunset View Cemetery in Kensington. The recent deaths of his very close friend Reggie Zelnick and of my wonderful professor Bill Bouwsma, who are memorialized there, decided where we would go on this walk. The fog was slowly pushing back out across the Bay as we discussed much about life and about dying and we could not possibly have imagined, at that point, that he would join them there so soon. I try now to hold close to my heart his wisdom on that walk, his dignity, his acceptance in deep sorrow of what death takes away along with the message he was living that we must temper our grief with gratitude for all that life has brought. To those of us who have known him it brought Larry; a person whose warmth and largeness of heart has forever expanded and inspired our lives.
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