Robert Sedgwick Chapman H66 (d2017) – K65, K66

Robert Sedgwick Chapman, MD, MPH, formerly of Chapel Hill, N.C. and a resident of Bangkok since 2004, passed away on June 10, 2017 after a long illness bravely borne. Dr. Chapman was an epidemiologist with the EPA for 30 years, then taught epidemiology, public health, and biostatistics at the College of Public Health Sciences at Chulalongkorn University. He is survived by his sister Ruth Chapman, brother Kim Chapman, partner Duang Yaingulueaum, and stepdaughters Maturos Pam Martin and Ganlaya Jan Rizzo.

-Published on NYTimes.com from June 16 to June 17, 2017

I was in awe of Chaz from the moment I got to know him, when we picked him up in Darien on our way to the Kroks’ inaugural retreat in the fall of 1964. Perhaps it was the distinguished gray hair, or maybe the way with words. Unfortunately what comes to mind now regarding the latter is eerily, sadly prophetic of the COPD that beset him towards the end: his frequent, gleeful use of the term “phlegmatic mucoid spume.” Sometimes the reference was literal; at others, figurative, and applied to certain out-of-favor individuals, if memory serves.

After a delightful year of trying to learn and sing Jeff Gutcheon’s challenging arrangements (we were both baritones, and so got all the notes that no one else wanted to sing), I had the great pleasure, the following summer, of traveling for several weeks in Chaz’s company in Europe. We met up in Athens, and while my erstwhile companions commandeered the Orient Express, he and I took the VW bug he’d secured up through Italy and France and across the Channel to London.

Before escaping Athens, though, we endured a minor fender-bender at some impossibly steep and blind intersection. Fortunately the other party was a good-natured Greek doctor who spoke excellent English; I can’t remember whose fault the accident was thought to be, if anyone’s, but the matter was resolved, largely thanks to Chaz’s diplomatic skills I’m sure, over ouzo in a nearby café.

London was another adventure; such things as seeing Help! in Piccadilly Circus had their charms, but so did the two British lasses in whose digs we were crashing. My former traveling companions, no slouches themselves, had preceded us to England and somehow set this up. But it was Chaz who stayed on after we left and, I’m told, more fully enjoyed those charms, courtesy of one Annabelle—“Belles,” as he called her.

The London experience would not, however, have been complete without a trip to Savile Row. Chaz procured a splendid three-piece chalk-stripe number, taking particular amusement, as I recall, in being asked on which side he dressed himself. A consultation with my traveler’s chequebook relegated me to the role of kibitzer, but I could still enjoy the sight of Chaz in his new threads, striking the relaxed and elegant contrapposto stance he tended to favor, on stage and off, and of which hyperactive a cappella groups everywhere might take note.

His love of the properly turned phrase, particulary the humorous variety, played a part in a somewhat later event. I was still in Cambridge at the GSD, and Chaz was in the infirmary with a collapsed lung (those damned lungs again). I’m afraid I nearly killed him by thoughtlessly lending him my copy of Lucky Jim—hard, sustained laughter was clearly AMA. His response when I asked him, many years later, if he recalled this, was typical: “Obviouslam!” (Hope you’ve all read the book.) That term almost, but not quite, supplanted his ubiquitous “Never better!” as a watchword between us.

Unfortunately, graduate school immersion and then moves (me to CA and then he to NC) separated us, and it wasn’t until much later that we really reconnected. I had finally attended my first Kroks reunion, the 60^th anniversary in 2006, and having been bitterly disappointed at his not being there, sought him out by email. He brushed off my complaints that his having fetched up half a world away, in Bangkok, was no excuse, and we embarked on a regular correspondence that lasted until its sad end last month.

Our bilateral exchanges soon were augmented by his including me in his regular, and regularly interesting, often hilarious, wider correspondence with a group of friends and relatives.The Chapman Puzzler, often with a baseball motif, was a regular feature, keeping us all on our toes, Google at the ready.

But the most consistent theme was his intense disgust at the revolting aspects of our political life and commercial institutions, even as they became still more and more so. All displays of arrogance, especially the institutional form, he found especially aggrieving. Never, I’m sure, has there been a less pretentious Porcellian, chalk-stripes notwithstanding. (I don’t think I’m making that up.) He was just the right guy for the wonderful solo on “Living Humble.”

Finally in the last few months we transferred to Skype, with Chaz patiently waiting while I worked through the problems of setting it up on my machine. At this point he was already in the hospital, and was seeing the writing on the wall, although of course I refused to believe that could be the case. The news felt like a punch in the gut.

What most struck me about those last communications was the selflessness—the concern for the friends and family he would be leaving behind, and especially for his beloved companion Duang. May we all leave in that spirit, which I’m sure hovered over all five days of his Buddhist sendoff, itself a beautifully poignant thing to contemplate.

-Malcolm MacKenzie