ROBERT F.X. RENEHAN

Dear family please accept my condolence and take courage, throw all your anxiety on the God of peace, he is near to all those calling upon him. He will grant you the strength the courage as you face the coming days.

I knew Bob and his family for many years through the dental office where I worked. He was a lovely man! RIP

Bob, besides being a very witty man, and having that unmistakable Bostonian sense of humor was a kind and supportive Professor. While I worked at the Department he always had an encouraging word to everyone around him. He will undoubtedly be remember for a very long time by the many souls he has touched during his life.

Of all the Professors I had the pleasure to study with at UCSB as an undergraduate and graduate student in the 1990's, Professor Renehan is the one I have brought up in conversation and in the context of class-sessions most often, for obvious reasons to the initiated but hardly hinted at in this obituary. Renehan, you see, was the student of the student of the greatest philologist of all time, the guy who engaged in public debates with another classicist named Friedrich Nietzsche. I'll never forget visiting his office as a grad student and him pulling his LSJ off the shelf and (a parlor trick he was notorious for pulling off more often than seemed possible) opening it up to the exact word he wanted to look up; the capacious margins filled with half-ant-sized writing, the marginalia of the man who, via articles frequently featured in the most rigorously peer-reviewed scholarly journals, corrected and augmented the LSJ. He was the kind of teacher who assigns to his Greek composition class the reading of the entire syntax section of Smyth, the way others assign novels, simply because of the value of having the experience of doing so under your belt. A day I'll never forget is when he threw an empty can of Dr. Pepper (his favorite [nay, ubiquitous] beverage) at me from across the room after asking him a (probably stupid or otherwise throw-a-can-at-me-worthy) question and nonchalantly catching it and without a beat tossing it into the trash can behind me with a perfect swish to the unrestrained laughter of the room and the visible amusement of the can-thrower. It may very well be the only time I impressed him to any extent. You see, Dr. Renehan was (at least in an academic setting) on a different planet than anyone else; humble enough, yes, but in another sense not, in another sense justifiably and proudly elitist and aware of his superiority to everyone else but with a twinkle in his eye that assured you he knew you knew he knew he was no less mortal than any of us.