Dr. Roy Bowers, an Internet pioneer, an outstanding English editor, and my friend

            Roy was not the kind of a guy one expects as a respected technical English editor of a Mexican federal research center. He was unique, and since his untimely departure to reside with the “Big Fish” in heaven, I have not met anyone like him. What can properly describe an editor who woke up daily at 4 am, took a large mug of coffee to the modest patio of his desert home, and edited scientific papers on an unbalanced, cracked wooden chair until 8 am, accompanied only by cats, bats, and early birds. Then, driving to the research center, delivered the completed manuscripts, collected the new ones, and by 10 am, he is on his small boat fishing in the bay for lunch. Or an editor who willingly donated his small, old fishing boat to under-financed researchers wishing to go to the nearby islands and had no funds to hire a fisherman. Upon reaching the islands, he left them to their work, towed his boat close to the mangrove trees and the birds, opened a sunshade, and started editing poor English manuscripts exposed to the cloudless pristine bay. Had I not photographed it myself, I would not believe the story. What can one say when a research paper returned from a prestigious journal in England claiming that the American editor does not know enough English to be an editor. Then Roy responded to the arrogant editor telling him that he is deeply sorry, but the editor is only an ex-blacksmith, and the paper got published. It happened to me. As I said, he was one of a kind.

Roy is editing an urgent manuscript of Yoav Bashan in the patio of his home on a Sunday morning.

The encounter of Roy with our research center and his editing business is my fault and I take full blame and pride. When I was invited in 1990 to join the center, I was one of the very few researchers who had some English publishing record. As such, an avalanche of manuscripts to edit for my colleagues collapsed on my head and almost crushed me. I could not refuse because I was the head of the department and these were my guys. Being afraid that I will not have any free time for my own research, I offered to Dr. Jose-Luis Ochoa, then the all-powerful boss of the Experimental Biology Division and my friend, that we should sacrifice one technical job from my department and find somebody who writes English better than me and that he will be the editor. “You find him, and I will hire him.” was the response. It was an easy find. La Paz in 1990 was mostly a poor, large town pretending to be a city and had only a fraction of the economic prosperity of today. For a foreigner who used to live in spacious houses, very few modern and furnished apartments were available, so I ended up with a new, small, one bedroom apartment. My neighbors, arriving to La Paz driving a large ugly pickup truck the same day I arrived to Mexico were two Americans, Marion and Roy Bowers. They were hired by the local state university as English teachers. Having my Spanish capacity limited to about 5 words, they immediately become my friends, translators, as they spoke Spanish, and culinary instructors in the field of city street taquerias because the university hardly paid them and fishing for eating was something for the future. He was an interesting man. I have no idea what he did before he came to La Paz, apart from the fact that he was a blacksmith for many years. When he got tired of handling horses, he started, at a relatively older age to study and was an English teacher in some Latin American outfits. Like many Americans, he had a passion for and an economic need for fishing. La Paz was a perfect destination for such a man. 

One bad, hot, and humid summer day, after returning from Punta Arenas beach, and very hungry since Roy failed to catch fish for lunch, we were stuck at the side of a large vado after a flash flood near Los Planes, caused by an insignificant hurricane. Having nothing better to do until the flood subsided, we talked about the future for foreigners in rural Mexico. Roy was unhappy as a teacher in the university, so I learnt. Something was basically wrong with the way they handled his things, in Roy’s opinion, and also the salary was nothing to brag about. The fishing boat he intended to purchase was as far and blurred in the sun heat as the day he came to La Paz. A dream. I felt, he was on his way out of here. However, with the promise of Dr. Ochoa for a position as English editor, and possibly a teacher, I asked Roy if he will accept an offer instead of searching for another job in the Caribbean or Southern Patagonia. Also, CIB staff worked from 9 am to 3 pm, affording plenty of time for fishing, and the salary was significantly higher. It was hard to refuse such an offer. It took him about a minute to respond positively, considering that his experience in scientific editing was close to zero, but he was not afraid. We agreed that I will assist him to understand science, an area in which he was clueless, but he will read English well. He needed the job and I needed free time for research, a perfect combination. From this modest beginning, an outstanding editor was born, a natural talent. In a short time, he did not need my help. He grew extremely fast on the job. Eventually, he outgrew the job description and was looking for more to do, especially in those summer days when fishing is good, but so is the heat and one does not need to fish everyday once the freezer was full.

 He soon came with a new idea he heard somewhere--“Internet”-- he called it. I had never heard about it. I had used for limited communication its predecessor, the so-called Bitnet, a heavy and inefficient computer way of communication. Not surprisingly, my favorite communication machine at that time was the fax machine. He envisioned that one day all the people of the world would “talk” together and communicate as easily as making a telephone call. In a few words, it was the dawn of a new era. This was outlandish thinking for its time, considering that CIB was using Telex as the official mode of communication, the administration used only paper documents, had no computers, and transferring information among scientists involved driving to the city with a pack of papers to a photocopy center and spending a lot of time waiting for the service. At CIB at that time there were only four 286 model computers for the entire Research Division of over 50 people; the prospects of easy and widely available personal communication seems crazy at best and unattainable for the near future. But he insisted. With no job description of a Webmaster in existence, he was our Webmaster, technical support; communication network of one person, and the fishing (for eating) was always a boat away and never forgotten. He was a one-man operation. It worked extremely well because CIB was small, everybody knew everybody, anything was possible, and by far it was more efficient than today, even though no less bureaucratic. By today’s standards, his “jobs” at a larger CIBNOR are filled with over a dozen different professionals. Yet, he was their pioneer, the “father” of all.

 There is no way to know how many papers Roy edited, as many never got published and were forgotten. He edited many manuscripts for me. At that time, once a paper returned from the editorial office of any English-speaking journal without the dreaded words “poorly written,” it was another non-visible medal on the chest of Roy. Since he started working, this common phrase just vanished, forever. The subsequent editors keep the norm ever since. In 1998, after he passed away, I believe that I collected most of the published papers and wished to create a memorial book out of them. The authorities at CIBNOR at that time never supported the idea and the pack of papers is still with me. The least I could do was to provide a list of these papers on this website. I also collected the international citations that these papers collected over the years until 2005. The thriving Internet communication in our center today, these publications, and the many citations that they gained are the true legacy that Roy left to the world, apart from the memories of the older generation at CIB who still remember the guy with the CIB baseball cap who used to collect manuscripts printed on real paper because computer publishing had not been invented.

 Roy did not concentrate only on what he was paid to do. He got more and more interested in the new graduate school that was established at CIB in 1994. Eventually, he even did his own Ph.D. by a remote education university in Hawaii, the rumors said the thesis involved the baby graduate school of CIB. But this is another story for other people to tell. For me, he was a guy who never said no to any request to edit a paper in the most crazy of times; the guy who helped to make our science known all over the world, and my dear friend. And for all of that, I do not have enough words to thank him.

 Roy disappeared from our lives, as sudden as he entered it; fast and way too young. He did not believe that the sun he loved so much was the enemy and I had never seen him wearing sun block. He got sick, left CIB suddenly, and passed away so fast that we never had time to say goodbye. He was the first and only member of our group who passed away. 

I believe that Roy is happy, as he always was. He is probably seated with the biggest fish of all in heaven chatting about communication among people. Perhaps he chats about how important it is to write proper English and perhaps he is just fishing, as he used to do in his “slim" years. Whatever he does, he had made an impact on my life and perhaps on the lives of many others at CIB. His legacy, even if unknown to most members of today’s CIBNOR, lives on. 

May his memory be blessed and remembered.

Yoav Bashan, La Paz, October 2005

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