Dr. James R. Roach

Jim...You've been gone 12 years now. We shared numerous phone calls, he in New Delhi, I stationed with the U. S. Navy in the Philippines. We had many spirited discussions, and always got familiar advice from him that I had heard from childhood, it always started "Now EJ..." Yes, I was named for my Uncle Jim, James Robert Roach. He was the main reason I joined the Navy and he fostered my "seeing the world." It is little known that Jim was U. S. Navy SpecOps during WWII as a bomb disposal...

I must say I was not a good or disciplined student when I took Dr. Roach's class, Politics of Southeast Asia. He was a hard taskmaster and I felt fortunate to get out of his class alive....But it was his influence and stories about S.E. Asia and India that made me want to experience what he had seen and done and eventually influenced me to join the Peace Corps in Afghanistan.....I learned many good life lessons there and on trips to India, Thailand and Singapore that will never be forgotten....

Professor Roach taught two wonderful classes at UT in the 1980s, American Foreign Policy and Politics of South Asia, both of which he taught with enthusiasm and passion. He was kind enough to work with me on an independent study, and welcomed me as an undergraduate to enroll in a graduate level couse he was teaching. He alone probably made my education at UT truly first-rate and I am sure that he did the same for many other students over the years. Jim Roach will always be the best in my book.

I had the misfortune of not being a student of Jim's, though I audited one of his classes and remember a time when a question I asked made him blush. Jim blushed more sweetly than anyone else I know, and I think this added to the sense he gave of being a modest, tender-hearted, lovely man. Since close friends of mine, including one ex-husband, were his students, I got to know him a bit when I was still a student, but our real friendship blossomed almost 40 years later when I wrote him that...

Jim Roach was my model professor, some time colleague, long time mentor, and valued friend. My relationship began in 1959 when, just out of the Navy, I began a year of graduate work at UT, with Jim my first professor of international relations; his seminar on the study of international relations influenced my thinking as an academic for years after, and his suggestions at the end of the year put me on the right track to an academic career. More such conversations from time to time...

Jim Roach was one of the great gentlemen of the Academy. As a teacher, mentor, colleague, observer, and counselor he was unsurpassed. His generosity and his wry and gentle humor changed the lives of each of us lucky enough to have known him. His was a life well-lived. I miss his wisdom and his compassion.

My father was a friend and student of Jim in the 1950's. I was a student, friend and employee of Jim's in the 1990's. Both of us enjoyed his insight and wit and appreciated his life's work. He will be greatly missed.

I came to the University of Texas at Austin in 1970 from rural New Mexico as a mathematics major interested in government. I took a course in US Foreign Policy from Jim Roach, and was in awe each time I came to class. His ability to connect with me and create this sense of engagement in foreign policy was amazing. As a result, I went on to take a government class each semester. Now as the dean of a college natural and social sciences, I often talk to the faculty in my college about what...