In the past several months we have seen the loss of well-known and influential members of the tunneling community, including Gary Greenfield in September and more recently Ralph Peck, Bob Pond, Bob Jenny and Tom Lamb.

I did not have the pleasure of knowing Ralph Peck, Bob Jenny or Tom Lamb, so I cannot personally speak to their contributions. (For more information see the Memorial section in this issue.) My travels and tradeshow attendance, however, afforded many encounters with Gary and Bob. I met Gary while he was working at what is now Minova International. I had several conversations with Gary – make that several long conversations – and the one thing shone through was his genuine character. There was no hidden agenda, salesmanship or angling when you spoke to him, just heartfelt Gary.

Shortly after Gary’s death there were e-mails reflecting his contribution to the industry. In one of them, Bob Pond himself recollected: “I was a very damp behind the ears on my first Project Manager assignment with the old Kemper Construction. Our Corps contract was the foundation and a mined underground cut-off wall 110 ft high by 800 ft long by 12 ft wide filled with concrete. The ground was Karst and pretty crappy, hence lots of bolts specified and many extras required. The book said to use Williams Groutable Anchors, and those of us of a certain age recall what a royal pain in the gluteous maximus those were.
“Along came Gary, a copy of a two-part change order and his bag of glue. He’d been to see the Colonel. I made him sit there while I called the Williams guy. He just smiled. I grinned. From that day until he retired he was a good friend of ours and of Frontier-Kemper. The industry will miss him. Where are the new Garys?”

As for Bob, he certainly was a one-of-a-kind character himself. He worked for Frontier-Kemper for more than 37 years and was a tunnel contractor through and through. I had the pleasure of working closely with Bob as a member of the TBM editorial board as well as his writings as a contributor to TBM. I remember reading his first contributed column for Gary Brierley’s “Dr. Mole” column and thinking “Who is this guy?” He wrote under the pen name Sweet Old Bob – or SOB for short – and developed a repartee with Dr. Mole that was widely received. He later took over his own column, “View from the Hole.”

Bob was not your ordinary tunnel stiff; he was witty and well read. His presentations at conferences were always entertaining but never trivial. We have assembled some his most memorable quotes and posted them to our Web site at www.tunnelingonline.com.

NAT Coming to San Francisco

In case you have been living in a tunnel, the biennial North American Tunneling show, sponsored by the Underground Construction Association of SME, is coming to San Francisco June 8-11 at the Hyatt Regency. This is the premier tunneling event in North America this year and is a must-attend event. For more information on the event, see our preview in this issue.

See you in San Francisco,

Jim Rush
Editor