AC_1965_Web

17 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z B R O D Y his knowledge about gorgonians— the soft shell coral of the tropical reef. He was still a doctoral can- didate, working for Dr. Paul Rufus Burkholder, a well-known marine biologist at Columbia who died in 1972; Brody was a coauthor on his very last published paper on the coral reef of Anegada, the only coral atoll in the Caribbean. I had a job working for the Harvard Arboretum to collect floral types on Anegada... Fortunately for me, Bob’s marriage to Paula was unsuccessful. Bob and I were hardly ever apart after that first meeting. Bob and I bought an old wooden boat and sailed the perim- eter of the Caribbean. He managed to get small amounts of funding to chase down the ciguatera thing. “We loved the sailing way of life. But we just couldn’t make an adequate living.We came up to the States, regretfully sold the boat and bought a piece of real estate on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, just south of Chestertown. On it stood the relic remains of a brick house circa 1711. For the next 10 years we restored the old house, got it estab- lished in the Historic Register, sold it and purchased more real estate to continue our, by then, developing horse breeding/training operation. “I don’t know exactly how to refer to Bob’s research. He was cer- tainly an environmental scientist; he was an environmentalist through and through. He was a fisheries biol- ogist, for sure. He was always politi- cally involved. Each time he got in- volved with some aspect of anything that had to do with how the world goes around, he’d get mad and prom- ised never to get involved in politics again! But he did.We lived just south of Chestertown, Md., for about 10 years during which time he worked for the Chesapeake Bay Watermen’s Association showing them better ways to fish, being their spokesman when all the chips were down and the watermen were branded the bad guys, thinking they had fished out the Bay. “He played the numbers game— collected figures on how much money the watermen actually added to the local economy. And they and Bob filed legal challenges.That was when the Sportsmen’s Association began to back off. [We] headed for Florida. The biology coming out of Florida seemed behind the times. Bob found a job at the St. Johns River Water Management District and fit right in. They loved him... the idea man, and he worked there for about 8 years. Meanwhile I had gotten into horses and bred, raised, trained and sold Peruvian horses—very ex- otic. He became very popular at the St. Johns River Water Management District for his dedication to re- search on water quality, which had been his fascination forever. For all the time he spent on/near/in/ around the water his other abilities were not given a back seat. Bob con- tinued his work with clean water at SJRWMD.The District supported the building of a research vessel of Bob’s design. It continues research begun by Bob and works under the name ‘R.V. Brody.’ “He was a remarkably good car- penter, dog and horse trainer and creative non-stop. He had a mind that remembered everything. For all of Bob’s talents, skills, he remained humble and shared his successes. I could go on for days ‘bragging on Bob.’ He was the single most inter- esting person I ever met; his humor kept me giggling. He was the high- light of my life.” PART IAL B I BL IOGRAPHIC INFORMAT ION: Robert W. Brody, David I. Griggs, Robert P. Van Eepoel (1970) Report on Water Quality and Marine Environment of Vessup Bay, St. Thomas. Caribbean Research Institute. Robert W. Brody. (1994) Biological Resources. Aquatic Resources. St. Johns River Water Management District. RobertW. Brody. (1971) Fish Poisoning in the Eastern Caribbean: Ciguatera. R. Brody, A. E. Dammann, P. R. Burkholder. (1972) Some phy- toplankton blooms in the Virgin Islands. Caribbean Journal of Science, 12:23–28.

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