When Nancy suggested "a personal note of memories" for this
wonderful occasion, she may not have realized what a floodgate she was
opening for me. Because in my case these memories go back 55 years to when
Joe and I first met on the steps of Wheeler Hall.
We worked together as graduate students and then, during World War
II, found ourselves sharing a tent on Guam as Operations Analysts for
the 20th Air Force. We were lucky--because the greatest danger we
faced during our year there was riding in a jeep on an unfinished
runway with a drunk driver (our section chief) who wanted to see
whether we could take off.
One of our recreations on Guam was to sing and whistle Beethoven
Quartets, of which we had the score. Some years later, reminiscing
about the war back in Berkeley at a celebratory lunch at Trader Vic's,
we softly (at least so I thought) hummed one of these tunes only to
be told sternly by the Maitre d', "Choir practice only on Sundays!"
But perhaps reminiscing about reminiscing is going a bit too far.
After the war, Joe and Teddy met in Washington, and until she
could join him Joe stayed with Susanne and me at 40 Oakridge Road.
This period ended with the event of which we are now celebrating the
50th anniversary. Gradually our children arrived. I was honored to
be asked to be godfather to Eleanor. Over the years, I also met both
Joe's and Teddy's parents and was invited to so many family
gatherings that I felt part of the extended Hodges family.
After obtaining our degrees, Joe and I began to work
together, with much of our work being done on hikes through the
Berkeley hills. On these occasions we talked not only statistics
but also discussed politics, books, music.... and sometimes
composed limericks. For one of these efforts we challenged
ourselves to make up one on our hard-to-rhyme colleague Siegfried
Neustadter. This resulted in:
He thus could not cram
Which exam was crammed full with errata.
During the summer of 1950 we took a memorable several-day hike in
Yosemite together with Charles Stein and Abraham Wald. The first
day we climbed from the valley floor to May Lake, a distance of
about 20 miles with a rise of nearly 6000 feet. I don't think I
ever quite duplicated that effort.
The success of our budding careers led to our appointments in the
1950's and early 1960's, each to a three-year period as Editor of
the prestigious Annals of Mathematical Statistics. We served as
each other's principal Associate Editor and troubleshooter.
This mutual assistance greatly eased the strain of the job.
This was also the time during which Joe and I wrote our joint book,
an introductory text called ``Basic Concepts of Probability and
Statistics". We heatedly argued about each section until we
thought we had it just right. Then Joe took his notes home to
write a first draft. When he showed it to me the next day, it often
bore little resemblance to what we had agreed on. ``Sorry",
Joe would explain, ``but my pen has a will of its own." We would
then re-argue the issues, but in the end Joe's stronger convictions
usually prevailed. Unfortunately, we published the book with
Holden-Day whose President, Fred Murphy, mismanaged the Company
and after a while stopped paying royalties to his authors.
Not surprisingly, the firm eventually had to declare bankruptcy, and
the book went out of print. However, during its lifetime it sold
more than 30,000 copies and was translated into Danish, Italian,
Hebrew, and -- very surprisingly -- quite recently into Farsi.
By the early 1970's Joe and I had published 18 joint papers, one
of which united our names in the statistical literature. The
Hodges-Lehmann estimator is an entry in the statistical encyclopedia,
it is discussed in many statistical textbooks, and it continues to be
the subject of research. But then our careers began to go in
different directions, as Joe became more and more involved in
high-level administration, first on the Campus and Statewide
Budget Committees, and then as advisor to the Chancellor and the
President of the University. The center of gravity of Joe's work
moved away from the statistics department, and we saw less of each
other professionally. Of course, this did not affect our
friendship, which soon included Julie, whom I met at about
that time.
"Hodges-Lehmann" -- it's not only a statistical concept but a
central part of my whole adult life to which I think back in
appreciation and with gratitude.
Joe and Teddy, thanks for everything, all good wishes and love from
us both.
A student named Siegried Neustadter
Lost all his pertinent data.
For his final exam,
-- Erich Lehmann