I learned today of the death of Fred Homer. His obit is here. I worked under Prof. Homer while getting a Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of Wyoming. While Fred and I had little in common politically, he practiced something woefully absent in academia: for Fred Homer the political was not personal.
Fred Homer gave me one of my favorite stories in an attempt in class once to illustrate an important point. Fred went to Rutgers on a basketball scholarship, but the team was quite bad. One of the guys on the team was named Delvecchio. This Delvecchio character was famous, or infamous, for only one thing. He had set the conference mark for fouling out in record time. Well, during one game in which Rutgers was once again getting killed, the team went in at half-time down big. The team had a rule. At half-time the starters would eat Hershey bars with almonds while the bench players ate regular Hershey bars. They go into the locker room and Delvecchio, who was definately not a starter, grabs a Hershey's with almonds. "Delvecchio!" an assistant coach screams, "Don't you know those are for the starters!" Fred would deadpan at this point, "Believe me, the reason we were losing by 30 points was not almonds versus no almonds." His greater point: don't sweat the small stuff. Just one of many lessons taught me by a good man and a great teacher, Prof. Fred Homer. RIP.
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