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On 7/12/2010 07:47, Tom Croat
wrote:
Dear Aroiders far and
wide:
I was out of touch from email over
the weekend because my wife is out of town and has my little cell phone
tower
receiver that allows me to read my email at home so I did not learn
about the
death of Julius until I came to work this morning. Like
the rest of you who know him well, we realize that his
departure will leave a big void in our lives and especially the
International
Aroid Society. He played such a large role in our little group that the
void
this September will be immediately obvious, the booming Trinidadian
voice, the
stories and joviality will be missed as well as his astute and forceful
presence at the IAS Board meetings.
Though he was opinionated he always had good suggestions. He
will really
be missed in his important role as auctioneer and co-promoter with me
of the
plants at the auction table to boost the prices and spur on the auction
bids.
I recall the first time I met
Julius. I was standing near the front
door of the Display Hall at Fairchild talking with someone and heard
the
booming voice of what appeared to be a black man, probably a native of
St.
Thomas where I had lived and taught school during the 1962–1963 school
year. I was shocked when I turned
around to find Julius. I though surely
the man I had been listening to had slipped away! Thus began a long and
fruitful association with a wonderful and intelligent man. I recall
that when I
was short of time and being unable to keep up with the messages on some
subject
on Aroid-L I would begin deleting them without so much as reading them.
But I
never could just delete a message written by Julius because they were
invariably filled with useful information.
Julius was very helpful to students
and beginners in the aroid field. He
was very helpful to many of my Latin American students who stayed with
me at my
house during the 1999 International Aroid Conference at the Missouri
Botanical
Garden. With some students, he
continued to communicate for years. There were 26 people staying in my
house
and Julius offered to sleep on a rather uncomfortable roll out couch
but he
slept well. He was especially close to my late student, Guanghua Zhu,
and
regularly corresponded while Guanghua was working on the revision of Dracontium. Julius knew a lot
about Dracontium
and provided us with living plants and a lot of detail about the
species he
knew, especially information about the fruits and seeds, plant parts
that came
to be known as the most important parts of the Dracontium
from a taxonomic standpoint.
Interventions by Jules to get plants
were often very productive. He had close friends all over the world,
especially
in the New World. Conrad Fleming in St. Croix and Joep Moonen in French
Guiana
were close associates, but perhaps most interesting was his contact
with
herpetologists, ornithologists and entomologists. Perhaps a lot of this
was
owing to his brother Hans, Director of the Port of Spain Botanical
Garden.
Probably no one with less formal education published paper on so many
disciplines. I am proud to have counted Julius as a co-author on a
plant paper.
Julius was particularly familiar
with Urospatha and even had a couple
of species in cultivation. His strong
powers of observation, learned as a child in his native Trinidad where
he spent
a lot of time in the field, followed by his experiences in the jungles
of
Ecuador, allowed him to have hypotheses on nearly every biological
phenomenon. In Ecuador when he had time
free from the toil on the oil rigs, he poked around in the surroundings. I have been to many such sites and in
Ecuador these rigs are plopped down right in virgin jungle so only a
few steps
from the bunk house allowed him to be neck deep in wildlife. It allowed
him to
become intimate with the local flora and fauna and he dearly loved this
experience
as most of you know from his many stories.
Julius could, of course, tell a story like no one else as all of
you
know. Perhaps this is what I will miss most, to realize that the
stories are
over. As I told him only shortly before he died in a letter, Heaven
will be a
must livelier and interesting place this Monday.
Tom
Croat
PS. Carla Kostelac and I would like to devote
the next IAS Newsletter to the lives of Julius Boos and Tricia Frank,
two IAS
Members of Legend that have passed from this earth so near together in
time. It would be nice of anyone who
wants to write articles about either or both of them would submit these
to
Carla soon for the August issue. There are many good comments that were
on
Aroid-L and we will use these with your permission but if any of you
wish to
update or modify your comments, please do so.
The piece by Ted Knight was especially moving. Ted,
of course, was blessed to be able to help Jules and spent
precious moments with him during his ordeal so he was in a position to
share
this with the rest of us. God bless you,
Ted, for this wonderful gift.
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