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G’day, y’all! Greetings from the sunny land Down Under. I wish I could be there in
person to mourn with you all today, for even the sparkling sunshine here cannot make up
for the bright light in my life that was extinguished this week.
The Supreme Dirtbag. The man who believed in me unconditionally, who shaped my career
and influenced me and my family in an overwhelmingly positive way. The man to whom I owe much more
than I can express in meager words today.
He’s a man with a wit that will be impossible to match, but I will give it a try, in part
with the help of his own words.
I first met Ricky almost exactly seven years ago, while in line for lunch at an NCCS user
meeting. I overheard him talking to someone about their new baby. I don’t know what
possessed me, as I usually try not to interrupt other people’s conversations, but I interjected
with something about my own new baby to these two complete strangers. This led to sitting
with him at lunch, telling him about my research, and his suggestion that I contact him the
next year when my postdoc was ending, about a job.
But then, he couldn’t wait out the year I had left, he told me over lunch that he
invited me to enjoy with him at the Crapeteria. He’d talked to my supervisors, determined
I was just what he was looking for, and wanted me to apply then. “You look happy,” he
observed. “I am!” I said. “I can see a way to be able to feed my starving child
on a more permanent basis.” “Well, don’t be too happy – if you take this job you’ll
have to work for me!”
I took that job. It was the best decision I ever made. I knew that it would be good
as soon as my family met his for the first time at Stupid China Buffet. My then 11-month-old
son latched onto Ricky in a way I’ve never seen before or since. Ricky and my husband
Jeff were like two peas in a redneck pod. And our families just bonded like we were
already family, a bond that continues to this day.
Work was not easy, but it was great. I had a boss who respected me and trusted that I
would get the job done and not *** up all the moving parts of a rock. He grew to trust
me farther than I could throw him, and gave me progressively harder and more crucial tasks.
I took all my bites of the *** sandwich, and didn’t mind it a bit, because it was
for him.
One day at a group meeting, I revealed to my colleagues that I hated it when people
referred to our group as “guys.” It’s exclusionary, because I’m not a guy, so
I can’t be part of a group of guys. After all, if somebody wanted to talk to someone
who was an expert on both smoothing and continuation methods for global optimization and ulnar
nerve entrapment, you wouldn’t point them to “the guy over there in the turquoise
blouse,” now would you? “Well, what are we supposed to say?” someone asked. “Hmmm,
how about group, folks, people, team…” “Dirtbags?” offered someone in the peanut
gallery. And that, friends, is how the term Dirtbag was coined.
It took on a life of its own. We were the Scicomp Dirtbags, and he, our fearless leader,
was the Supreme Dirtbag. He loved being called Dirtbag, and was addressed in that way so
much that my young son honestly believed it was his name. One day when we were talking
about “Ricky,” Vinny asked who that was. I told him it was another name for Dirtbag.
“That’s a silly name for Dirtbag,” he commented. This term of affection became a
badge of honor at SC10, where only the best were given an “SC10 Dirtbag” badge to
wear proudly.
Ricky wore every badge proudly. “Fat, stupid, and ugly,” he would reply when asked “How
are you?” I gently suggested that maybe rather than fat, he was simply full of elemental
awesome. He just took up that much space because otherwise, there would not be enough room
for all the awesome! “Yes, dear,” he said to me, in mock obsequiousness. But Ricky had
a true affinity for honesty and preferred to keep it real. It was a matter of pride
that, despite the professor who said he’d never amount to anything because he was fat,
that he had earned a PhD and went on to become one of the most influential movers and shakers
in HPC.
Although he would never brag about it, he really was a larger-than-life force in the
high-performance computing world: a man whose knowledge and expertise was well-known and
well-respected, and whose decisions and strategies will continue to shape the HPC world well
after we are all gone too. One of his biggest legacies was the Student Cluster Competition.
This 48-hour non-stop showdown in which teams of undergraduates run scientific applications
on supercomputing clusters that they’ve designed and built was the brainchild of Ricky
and a few other co-conspirators. It was exactly something that would have blown his skirt
up – it involved mentoring kids to learn the important HPC skills that you can’t
pick up in school. He beamed with parental pride when I told him I was taking Australia’s
first-ever team to the competition. I’m currently trying to find a way to memorialize
him with an endowment for the competition.
In addition to being so central in his profession, he was a larger-than-life influence on so
many people’s lives. The tears roll down my cheeks as I read all the tributes to Ricky
that keep coming on Facebook. He influenced me in the personal sphere at least as much,
if not more, than in the professional sphere. He was a busy man – it took seven of us
to replace him when he was out for a while – but he always had time for me. We talked
about everything, from the mundane to the hilarious to the serious. He knew what made
people tick, and how to motivate people to be their best.
As everyone who loves him knows, he was outwardly gruff and a little bit scary, but marshmallow
soft on the inside. My son’s reaction when first meeting him was proof of that. He was
always looking out for the little guy, and a staunch advocate for the advancement of
women and minorities. He was always on the side of truth and justice.
Choice words of the four-letter variety, although plentifully dispensed, were never directed
abusively at the listener. They were instead woven into poetry, with an eloquence that
I cannot ever hope to reach, to create colorful expressions of all kinds. There are plenty
of good ones I remember – for example, we fantasized about sending a Gay Pride necktie
to a homophobic relative of mine, who “needed to wear a tie to keep the *** from covering
his head” – although many of the particularly expressive turns of phrase are unfortunately
lost to time.
“I’ll be hard to miss!” he’d always rejoinder when you’d say that you’d see
him later. That was technically true then, but today it is categorically false. You’re
impossible not to miss, my dearest Dirtbag. Last week, the *** rolled down the hill,
onto us at the bottom. It could always get worse, I suppose, although at this point I
would welcome you sitting on my lap!
You turned our lives in different directions than they would otherwise have gone, and changed
the game for good. The prospect of life without you there scares me, and I’m fearless. But,
as Jeff said to me, you will live on forever, in all of us. I hear your observation that
the jerk in my office “has his mandible attached to his pelvis in a posterior fashion,”
and I agree, with a smile now replacing my snarl. I recall your generosity to me every
time I help a young person in their career. I channel you in every act of kindness as
well as every four-letter word. Life’s hard, I’m wearing my helmet, and I’m gonna keep
on going, with my inner Ricky to guide me. I’m a better person for knowing you, and
I’ll love you as long as I live.