Thursday, August 4, 2022
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I met Fred when we were both graduate students at U-Conn (~1986). There were a lot of good times.
Fred had this amazing ability to say outrageous things that could get an entire room laughing when he was annoyed by something. I recall that once we were just killing time before a graduate student residence association party. We were then drafted into washing and cutting up vegetables for that party since we were obviously not doing anything useful. Truth be told, neither of us were particularly interested in this task. A suggestion was made that we could just save time by throwing the vegetables in a trough and no one would notice or care. The person who drafted us then turned on us and loudly said, "That statement shows all men are just pigs." Without missing a beat, Fred responded "And likewise all women eat pork." All of the drafted workers burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter despite our "overseer" shouting "Don't you wish, don't you wish."
Back in graduate school we stayed up waaaay too late watching late night fare. This would start with the late night hosts and often continue to whatever movies were on after those "late night" shows just gave up. Watching is a generous word here. The TV was often just a background sound to get us through lulls in the conversations. The commercials were either entirely ignored or satirically ripped apart. Sometimes, games were played (Fred was a true master at scrabble). Sometimes bizarrely weird conversations occurred (“You are the type of person who would beat your ex-wife” which was aimed at someone who was never married, not currently dating, and had zero history of violence). Heck sometimes we would just go out and get air in long walks despite the hour.
I know that Fred eventually gave up being a graduate student and began working full time at the library. After this choice, he once proudly stated that he had gone from a failed graduate student to the person who was dictating rules about thesis submissions to the graduate school (it had to do with proper formatting of thesis dissertations which are always bound in hard copy and stored in the library). However, I can attest that without someone like Fred around many of use might not have finished our degrees. Fred had a way of lightening the load and helping us temporarily forget out problems. Fred was highly valued in our little graduate student community.
I am attaching two photos the family might not have of Fred. The first is a picture of myself, Becky (my wife) and Fred which was taken in Indiana (~2019). The second picture is a picture of Fred and I taken around 2015 in Storrs.
Timothy Grove
