Remembering Bob Prasch

From Stephen Paolillo ’15

Professor Prasch was my favorite professor at Middlebury College. I first took Macroeconomic Theory with him my junior spring, and I fell in love with the way he taught, the way he seemed to truly care about his students, the irreverent and joyful way he taught economics and the love he seemed to have for life itself. The way he taught economics made me fall back in love with my major, after I was starting to struggle with my choice of major. I remembered why I am an economics major, and why I love being one.

I’m a big baseball fan, so it was always a joy to walk down to Wilson Cafe, sit down with Professor Prasch, intending to ask a question of him on how the Federal Reserve increases the money supply, only to spend an hour arguing over whether the A’s should’ve traded for Jon Lester. His presence in any room could not fail to be noticed by anyone – as his friendliness, his vibrancy and his passion for life marked him out in a crowd. His constant jokes about the dishonesty of Wall Street and the haplessness of big corporations were as welcome as his fierce and uncompromising sense of morality. As I grew to know Professor Prasch, and he was gracious enough to write me a number of recommendation letters, the more I grew to like him and enjoy his presence in my life. It is sorely missed now.

What else is there? As it always is when a community loses someone, we think of the missed opportunities to know them better – I never went and got a beer with Professor Prasch at Two Brothers, and watched a baseball game, something I was meaning to do. I never met his wife, or talked with him about his time in the Army. I never talked with him about the trades that the A’s made this winter, and to find out what his favorite movies were. I was never able to present my thesis to him, or talk about my topic with him. One of my dreams is to become an economist, and part of that dream was being able to come back to Middlebury someday and talk with Bob about the ideas of the day, and what I was working on. That’s something that I will unfortunately never be able to do.

I obviously didn’t know Professor Prasch as well as others who have been posting here, but I guess I just wanted to say that he will be missed, by everyone who knew him.

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