A remembrance of Dr. Richard Repasky This is the text I prepared for the memorial service for Dick Repasky. I stuck fairly close to the text. One of the people who spoke before me said that one of the things that everyone loved about Dick was that he had the courage to say what everyone was thinking but afraid to say. The only part of my talk that I ad-libbed was that when I stood up, I said “Hi, I’m Craig Stewart, Associate Dean for Research Technologies, Executive Director of PTI, a runner, and a cyclist. And I’m the person to whom Dick said those things that other people were afraid to say, and I will really miss that.” Here are the remainder of my remarks as prepared – I red them pretty much as prepared - plus or minus choking up a bit We are here today to be together and honor a life well lived, the life of Dick Repasky. Dick was an amazingly thoughtful and creative person, colleague, scientist, information technologist, and friend. Dick managed three different consulting groups during his 13+ years at UITS. In that time his contributions to the university community, and the national and international scholarly community, were many and varied. One example of Dick’s creativity and his care in how he went about his work was a tool that he created called XLiveCD. This was made up of scripts of he wrote and a set of open source tools that would let a person using a windows computer just put a CD in the CD drive, fire it up, and use open source software without really having to know very much about what they were doing. This was an idea that Dick had to make some important bioinformatics tools more widely accessible. Dick asked for some time to work on this project, and I told him to go for it. After a while, Dick came to me and said “this is going to take a lot more time than I expected. When you actually get down into some of the Linux terminal driver code what you find is some code that was basically swiped from a vendor, and I don’t want that code in what I’m putting together.” Nobody but Dick would actually think to read the details of the device drivers of widely used open source tools and figure out that there was tainted code in it. Dick went off, starting on what we both expected was going to be a weeks long code sanitizing effort. He came back a few days later and said he was basically done, and had found a truly elegant way around using any of the tainted code. And XliveCD was for years one of the most widely used open source tools distributed by IU. It helped a lot of wayward windows users make use of bioinformatics tools that would otherwise have been inaccessible to them. I could give you dozens of examples of Dick’s innovations and his care in his work - but this gives you a sense of Dick’s approach to what he did. Dick contributed to IU, in many ways, starting in the Biology Department, and then moving to UITS. Dick was a gamer. He’d do anything from sit and read and think deeply to arrive at a solution to a hard bioinformatics problem to putting on work cloths and gloves and helping with supercomputing display setups. He filled in and handled all sorts of problematic situations – some of which I should note that I created. Dick fundamentally changed the structure of computing support at IU. Bioinformatics is different – a very complicated and interesting area of computing. We now have a whole group of people supporting bioinformatics and life sciences computing, and that grew out of Dick’s achievements first as a lone bioinformatics consultant and then as manager of the Center for Computational Cytomics. Dick has been a key leader in the success of the Metacyte initiative – one of the most significant efforts in life sciences at IU. Dick’s work goes on, including some plans that he developed last summer that will influence the computing environment at IU for years. There are a lot of Ph.D. biologists in the world. There was only one person who was the first bioinformatics consultant at the computer center of IU, and that was Dick. Dick was much more than just a wonderful colleague and scientist. He was a wonderful person with many and varied interests, especially birding. He was frequently off on trips helping other biologists with their fieldwork, or recreational birding. He was very active in the Monroe County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, and through that provided communications support for many large recreational events. The last time I saw Dick doing radio support for a big event was at the Red Eye Relay race held last summer, an event that he and Anurag Shankar were both involved in. I wasn’t running, but several of my friends were, so I hung out with Dick awhile at one of the exchange points. My wife and I rode in the Hilly Hundred bike tour this fall. When I saw Anurag at that event, and knew that Dick was not able to be there, I wondered if perhaps I had already seen Dick out and about with his radio for the last time. Sadly I had. To be respectful to Dick Repasky I need to point out that he could be a phenomenal pain in the rear. Almost all of the time this stemmed from his convictions and principles. Some of the time it stemmed, I think, from an belief deep down inside him that people in positions of responsibility just needed to be messed with now and again. And I think he was right. Dick talked a good bit about cancer and about life when his sister Nancy was ill – her illness and passing affected him deeply. Dick was ill himself for a long time but didn’t talk much about his own situation. I have never known a person who was focused on using the time he had well as intently as Dick was, and in that way Dick is an example for us all. As Dick’s health deteriorated, he relied on a small group of people who helped him out when he needed help – including Anurag Shankar, Rich Knepper, Steve Simms, Matt Link, and Bill Barnett. Thanks to you especially and everyone who helped Dick out in any way through his illness. The thing I will miss most about Dick is the way he stuck to his principles. Second will be his wit. Dick could be truly hilarious – most especially his imitations of one of the business managers reacting to the fact that we had rented a penguin suit with university funds as part of an official university function. Most of all, we all miss a good guy whose time on earth was too short but filled with achievements of all sorts. To Dick’s family – parents Raymond and Claire; his sister, Lynn Kieffer and her husband Christopher Kieffer; and his nephew Christopher Kieffer Jr.; and his niece, Stacie Sullivan - we share your loss and your sadness. For all of us here, and those not able to be with us today, we have lost a good friend. As we share in our sadness, we should at the same time hold up and celebrate a life well lived. Here’s to you, Dick Repasky.