I am very sorry to hear of Larry Berkove’s passing. Larry was a friend, a mentor, and a model to many of us. He was a very generous scholar, as others have noted. Like Mark Dawidziak, I had a poignant moment with Larry at the 2013 Elmira conference. I was sitting outside the meeting halls on a picnic table, smoking a pipe. Larry came and sat down and we had a very deep conversation, just the two of us. He said some of the same things he told Mark: about his advanced age and the likelihood that this was his last of the conferences, but also about the importance of the rest of us to carry on. It was one of those rare moments in life when people talk about things that really matter. As kind as Larry was, he could also be a bit of an iconoclast—but then, so could Mark Twain, and so can I—which is why I held Larry Berkove in such high regard. He will be missed by so many of us. 

John Bird

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