Rodolph “Bucky” Audibert Delaroderie, III

Bucky was the kind of person who always had more projects — most of them self-initiated — than he ever had time to handle. Contributing to this page was one of the many things he was going to do when he got a chance. He never got the chance, so I will try to do it justice for him.

He was an exceptionally intelligent man with a near-photographic memory. His recall of facts and figures and his grasp of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics were things he took great pride in. His command of English was phenomenal — he could have quoted most of Harbrace by heart. He was a proud member of MENSA, and stood tall even among its exceptional members.

As is often the case with gifted people, Bucky was also highly eccentric, and found the social niceties difficult at best and tedious at worst. Yet in his later years he developed a remarkable empathy with animals in need. He and Patsy kept as many as twelve at once, inside and out, though the number usually settled around five or six. In his last years he delighted in photographing them, and collected hundreds of pictures.

What he was good at

One of his favourite pastimes was long solitary driving trips around the country, visiting the spectacular parts of it. You could name almost any spot in America and he would give you the highway numbers, the exit numbers, and what services were there. Once he saw a place on a map or visited it, he never forgot the sort of detail the rest of us lose in a week.

He loved working on the computer from the 1980s onward. He was a master of DOS first, and made the move to Windows with great reluctance. He became highly proficient with graphics, then took to Microsoft Works and used it to keep everything from banking records to grocery lists. He was also a skilled carpenter, electrician, and plumber, and an accomplished cook with a library of recipes, unusual foods, and spices held entirely in his head.

And what he was not

He had his share of shortcomings. He didn’t believe in celebrating holidays, birthdays, or anniversaries of any kind. Expressing emotion did not come easily. He could be short with other people’s ineptitude, and he tended toward an epicurean indulgence that eventually brought on diabetes.

But the scales tipped easily in his favour. His most admirable quality was an effortless honesty. If a stranger handed Bucky a million dollars in cash to hold for a month, there was no question it would be there at the end of it. Doing anything else with it would not have occurred to him. He simply wasn’t wired for deviousness.

10 August 2006

Late that Thursday afternoon at home, Bucky suffered a massive aneurysm in a major abdominal artery. A few hours later, at the old Baton Rouge General Hospital, the doctors turned off the respirator. He had turned 78 less than three weeks before.

Ever the eccentric, he wanted his body delivered to a medical school for research. The University of Texas in Houston accepted, and he was transported there immediately. Almost two years later they returned his ashes to Patsy. It was Bucky’s wish that his son Rad spread them at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, his favourite place to visit. In June 2009, Rad honoured the request.