2 March 2000

Last night, for no particular reason at all, I was thinking about John Grubb.

John Grubb, Jim Skinner, and Kevin Hulsing. They were inseparable. They liked NASCAR and baseball and beer. They chewed tobacco when they played softball - but not at any other time. They were faithful to their girlfriends, but enjoyed a little eye-candy as much as the next man. They were always ready to help someone in need and to greet you with a smile. Jim had dark hair and a beard; John was fair and always needed to shave. John worked for a local racetrack, collecting money for parking, and he frequently drafted Jim and Kevin to help him. John and Jim were both the sort of charismatic, fun-loving guys who make the South a pleasant place to be.

When I first got to know the trio, I thought Kevin was a charity case. He was somewhat overweight, with red hair and freckles and glasses, and he was deaf, which made him sound sortof stupid when he talked, because his words slurred together. (He got by on a combination of lip-reading and a very powerful hearing aid.) But after I'd known them all for a while, I realized that they genuinely liked him. They were like the Three Musketeers.

It was Kevin who first invited me to join them at lunch, and after that I went to lunch with them at least twice a week. I never talked much - John and Jim talked a lot. It was fun to watch them, though. They joked and kidded around and generally had a lot of fun.

John pestered me for weeks until I finally agreed to go play softball with them and some other folks. I expected to be either teased or patronized - atheletic I am not, and they both played a lot. Jim had the kind of muscles that made t-shirt sleeves look uncomfortably tight. But they did neither. The first time I stepped up to bat, the guys in the outfield didn't even move in, though once I made it clear that I couldn't hit the ball further than the pitcher's mound, they did. But they didn't tease me for that, or try to offer advice. They did tease me when I missed a catch, which was all right - because they teased everyone that way.

When I last saw them, all three of them were preparing to carry on where I had feared to try: They were going for their PhD's. The four of us spent most of our working hours together in the graduate student offices of VA Tech's math department. The three of them were almost frighteningly intelligent - the more so because they looked like such "regular" guys. But when I made my farewells to them at the graduation ceremony where we collected our master's degrees, all three were planning to continue on to a doctorate, though I think John had plans to change departments and get his PhD in statistics rather than theoretical mathematics.

I don't know what happened to them after I left. I don't know why I thought about them last night out of the blue, but it was such a strong, clear memory - from John's "Jack Handy" wall-calendar to Kevin's imitation of the Caddyshack's gopher dance - that I wanted to share it with you today.