I met Father Busa at one of the early Computers and the Humanities conferences, and in 1985 invited him to present at UC Davis. The night before, at dinner, we were telling jokes, and I told the one about the cannibal who had eaten both Protestant and Catholic missionaries, and had an ecumenical movement. Since the Italians at the table didn't quite understand, the always understanding Father Busa translated, if somewhat grimly. The next night, at a banquet, we took turns regaling each other with computer horror stories. Father Busa admitted that a while before, two sets of the *Index,* on tape, were to be transported to a new location, and two trucks were hired. Someone, however, mixed up the sets, and sure enough, one truck crashed and burned. That might have been the end of decades of work, but Father Busa and probably Thomas Aquinas got it all back together.
He was not only a great and towering man, he was a very human man,
Kevin Roddy University of California, Davis