My friendship with Bill Torbert began in the Spring of 1967 as he was putting together the staff of the Yale Upward Bound Program. Our relationship lasted until we dined together a few days before his death. Actually, our relationship will last until mine.

He opened many doors in many ways through which I passed

I too participated, with Jim, in the Yale Upward Bound program that Bill created and guided from the spring of 1967 through 1968. It was a powerful, life-changing educational and communal experience not only for many of the students—marked as bright but ‘at risk’ by their schools—but by the faculty and advisors he invited to share in its self-governance. For me, he was an exemplar of tenacity, intellectual vitality, and optimism—an utterly unique, caring, inspiring human being. I will hold him in my heart.  

My relationship with Uncle Bill involved conversation over the years.  He and I shared an interest in topics of love and philosophy, and engaged what was to me a thought-provoking correspondence surrounding some of his scholarship.  He celebrated good questions in his account of the good life, and it was my privilege to share in some of the conversations those questions provoked.