Reflections on Paul B. Kissinger by a Neighbor

We are here together today to find comfort by sharing our sorrow for the loss of our friend, our colleague, and our family member, Paul B. Kissinger.

Our sorrow is all the greater because Paul was simply too full of life to have left us. But we are here not only to mourn Paul, but to celebrate a life well and wonderfully lived.

Paul was always saying, "It doesn't get any better than this."  That was his mantra. Paul appreciated life.  He took endless delight with the small and good things surrounding him.  A quiet, mid-summer dinner on the porch, a glass of wine, surrounded by family and friends, that's what he'd always say:  "Well, it doesn't get any better than this."

Paul was a family man.  Joanne, and Scott and Lisa, their families and children.  Some families become islands unto themselves, but the Kissinger family is an extended one.  It reaches out.  It has been a bridge to so many of us, a series of ever widening concentric circles.  It has offered affection, warmth, and support. We have all been touched by it.

Paul was a man of simple tastes, but profound interests.  He was a creative scientist and an experimental and innovative teacher.  His zest for life was expressed by a sophisticated, and yet child-like, curiosity about the world around him.  That, added to his inherent warmth and generosity, was surely the secret of his success as a teacher and mentor.

For a generation of his colleagues, Paul's commitment to his science, his warmth for his students, his sense of responsibility to his university, the leadership role he was so frequently called upon to perform, was a quiet model.  It became wired into our subconscious minds.  No one better represented what it means to be a gentleman, a scholar, and a citizen of a university community.

And Paul was fun.  While I like cars - fast, expensive, and beautiful cars - Paul had an altogether different take on all that.  Some years ago he came home with a blue Ford Fiesta with all of the aerodynamic features of a cereal box on wheels.  I worried about the aesthetics of the neighborhood, not to mention its property values.  But Paul was proud of that car.  It was inexpensive to gas up.   It was great for carrying brush and tree trimmings to the sanitary fill.  Paul placed a license plate on the front bumper, reading, "I'd rather be flying."   Well, who wouldn't?  Paul loved it that his young grandchildren called the Fiesta "the clown car."  That perfectly suited him.

Paul was a performer.  Not just in class with his orbs and spheres and exotic physics objects.  A few winters ago Paul and Joanne decided to accompany Rod Clifford and me and our students on one of our Russian winter term trips.   We found ourselves in Prague at an old inn called "The Two Cats."   The food was Central European:  great and heavy.  The beer was Bohemian: great and light, a Pilsner brew served in large pitchers.

Paul pulled out a handful of Czech crowns to encourage the old accordionist haunting our large table to play "Beer Barrel Polka," "My Funny Valentine," and such.  Paul laughed and crooned enthusiastically, and the rest of us per force joined in.  By the time we had ordered dinner Paul had transformed that old tavern into a karaoke bar.  Afterwards Rod observed to me a bit ruefully, "You do know, Ralph, our students like Paul and Joanne more than they like us."

Two years later when I returned with another group of students to "The Two Cats," that same old musician looked us over, got out his accordion, and asked, "Where's Paul?"  Then he broke into "Beer Barrel Polka" over and over again.

Paul's good cheer, his joy in living, his enthusiasm to share things great and small, his commitment to family and friends and community-these are our memories.  This is the inspiration he leaves to us all.

O. Ralph Raymond

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