Of the many unpleasant things about growing older, perhaps the worst is
living long enough to see many dear friends depart this life. Larry was, as
Tom Quirk points out, one of the good ones, and he'll be dearly missed. I
feel privileged to have had him as a friend and mentor. He was always
generous and supportive and no doubt helped to make me a better Mark Twain
scholar. 

One of the contributions to our field of which I'm most proud was playing a
role in persuading Larry to to attend the 2015 conference in
Hannibal--something he was reluctant to do because of his health. Happily,
he was glad he attended, almost as glad, in fact, as were his many friends
who saw him there.

Here's a link to the forum page containing a picture of Larry and Gail I
took at the conference:
http://www.twainweb.net/gifs/Hannibal_2015/Hannibal2015a.html

I'll miss Larry for many reasons,, one of which is his quiet sense of humor.
Over the years, he loved twitting me about a silly matter. I live in a
California town called "Thousand Oaks." He never tired of asking me if the
town really does have 1,000 oak trees. Yes, Larry, it does. More than 1,000,
in fact, but I think you knew that all along.