The few times I had conversations with Dick were wonderful. My favorite was back in Dec. 1988 when it seemed like half of southern Oregon was following SP4449 down the Siskiyou Line. I was one of the first to set up for a nice shot of the 4449 splitting the semaphores at Merlin, OR. A few moments later Dick pulled up in his ancient van, jumped out and ran up the hill where a few of us were waiting. He was huffin' and puffin' pretty hard and I said something like, "I wasn't sure if the exhaust I was hearing was from you (Dick) or the 4449."

Dick laughed and said, "It must be me. This is what old age does to you."

We chatted until the 4449 showed up. He had a great gift of saying thousands of words in a single image.