In memoriam of J.R.Sherman, Dick for his (many) friendsRome 28 August 2000 (by Giacomo Polosa) Dick Sherman, President of RCI, passed unexpectedly away on the evening of July the 4th: it happened to be my birthday too, so a few hours before the sad event I had received his almost usual festive telephone call. Normally dedicated to comment the HPCN events of the week, discuss plans, results and (mostly) dreams for RCI... That time the phone call was short and mainly dedicated to a warm and sincere "happy birthday ".
Dick and I were long time friends: we had met the first time in 1963, at that time I was a junior salesman with UNIVAC in Rome, and Dick was leading a travelling task force sent by the Company Headquarters in Saint Paul to "train the European Sales Executives" (TEE Program). He was only a few years older than most of us, but sounded like a mature, self-assured, aggressive and competent sales leader and indeed he transferred that spirit and positive attitude into many of us.
We then lost track of each other for about twenty years: he had gone through different sales and management positions with UNIVAC, RCA, DIEBOLD and CONTROL DATA (almost a "must" for those who lived in Minneapolis) before starting Research Consortium together with Peter Patton and others.
At the time of the very first supercomputers he had felt the need for an enterprise of some kind which could provide both vendors and users of such novel techniques, architectures and methodologies non-biased information, perceptions and strategic advises.
Well, we met again in 1983, at a Conference on Supercomputing held in Bari (Southern Italy) by a Research Institution called CSATA-Tecnopolis. I remember that, while looking at the list of the invited speakers, the names Patton and Sherman did not immediately remind me an old acquaintance, but rather I thought that to be complete, the names of Gen. Grant and Pershing were missing...
He was the one who recognised me, with a great enthusiasm and sincere joy... A few months later, I became associated with Research Consortium (later, after the separation of Peter Patton, RCI Ltd.) and from there we built a solid friendship. He used to say that I wasn't not only his best friend (this did not mean that we didn't disagree on some business issues or on Chinese food) but also a "soul brother". Some won't believe, but we could many times read each other's mind and a simple glance, in a business meeting or during a Conference, meant that we were sharing the same perceptions.
RCI Ltd. , the Global Consortium for the High Performance Computing and Communications Industry, whose mission was "to further the cause of High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) by bringing together visionary users with the most demanding applications, progressive vendors, technologists and experts serving the Global HPCC market. RCI helps members to realise the benefits of HPCC by encouraging cooperation among members and addressing issues/concerns, wants/needs pertaining to HPCC, through research, publications and forums".
Difficult to say whether it will continue : RCI was Dick Sherman.
Dick has been a great, loyal, honest, enthusiast, capable and extrovert man: his capability of running a Symposium, a Conference, a Seminar, was almost legendary, I am sure that many of us, in the High Performance Computing marketplace, owe him much and will miss him dearly and intensely. Maybe sometimes he has been considered a "visionary", but life around us is beautiful also because there are "visionaries", we all have dreams, expectations and like to think that they will one way or another materialise, even if rationality tells us that it won't work...
Arrivederci, Dick: you went away too soon, we had still many projects to talk about, many things to do, many happy hours to spend,,, and I didn't even have the time to teach you Italian, as we had agreed several times.
In a next life, maybe.
Giacomo Polosa |
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