Bob Cricenti died suddenly at his home in Blacksburg, Virginia on Sunday, Sept 27, 2020.
Among the many who will miss him, Doug Rae, who knew Bob since freshman days in Williams C, has composed a lovely tribute to Bob, full of caring detail. The official obituary can be found here
We’ve also assembled a gallery photos from Bob’s life with the contributions from Bob’s family, Doug Rae, and Carmen Lozano. Please take a moment to browse.
To complement Doug’s tribute, we’d like to add a few words of our own:
Open, generous, and giving, Bob was a joiner, and a loyal friend. He traveled to Washington DC in 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, a trip that many other former volunteers would not have felt the obligation to make.
As a native New Hampshirite, Bob held dreams of studying at Dartmouth but was steered toward Williams by his father, who had met and admired (ski coach) Ralph Townsend at the University of New Hamphsire. A little known fact: Bob turned down Yale to attend Williams.
Bob had a lovely tenor voice, and thrived in Robert Barrow’s Glee Club. He was also a key member of the Williams Outing Club, organizing and running Winter Carnival our senior year, and introducing the very first computer scoring for the event.
An excellent mathematician, but at times a somewhat reluctant scholar in other topics of inquiry, he spent as many hours of his time at Williams at the 101 level of any foreign language as he could find, confessing later that he did this so he wouldn’t have to write papers, an exercise that he confessed to be less than fond of.
He ran the family business, Cricenti’s Market, with a special touch, greeting each customer by name. Among his many customers was Donald Hall, Poet Laureate of the United States, who lived in nearby Wilmot, NH.
Finally, Bob was a founding member of the Williams 68 website team, handling the data gathering and backend chores for the timeline you can see here.