Dick was born on October 10, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ray & Claire Repasky. Dick has a sister Lynn, and Nancy, who preceded him in death. Dick lived in Avon Lake, Ohio where he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. His family moved to Charlotte, NC where he attended high school, and where his gift for math and science became apparent. Dick received his bachelor and masters degrees at North Carolina State University and his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His doctoral thesis work was in the field of Evolutionary Biology. Dick did his post-doctoral research at the University of California in Santa Cruz and later at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, Indiana. He taught biology at IU before deciding to change careers to Information Technology. He was the Manager of the Center for Computational Cytomics at IU where he focused specifically on supporting bioinformatics and computational biology. Dick was well known for his unwavering intellectual integrity and critical judgment. His keen insight and analytical abilities were available to all those who worked with him, and many sought it actively. Dick had a great love of the outdoors and was an avid birder, and took time off for recreational birding as well as for fieldwork helping his friends and colleagues with their research. His love of birds started when his mom started taking him on bird walks in grade 7. Being the creative force that he always was, Dick created a free computer program he called J-bird that is used today by thousands of bird watchers worldwide to record their bird observing activities. He was an avid member of the Bloomington Birders and was involved in its annual bird and spotted owl counts. As an outdoors-man, Dick was an expert rock climber having done solo climbs in the Canadian Rockies, and he taught crevasse school to scores of novice climbers. He was also known to take extensive cross-country ski treks through the Canadian wilderness in the dead of winter. In the last five years of his life, Dick became deeply involved in amateur radio. He obtained a ham license in 2006 and immediately began participating in the Bloomington Amateur Radio Club and the Indiana University Amateur Radio Club activities. He also became a volunteer for the Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES) and Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES), two organizations that work closely with the Monroe County Emergency Management Agency in providing reliable communications during disasters and other emergencies when all else fails.