Ron was a new Assistant Professor when I arrived at HPS.  Confident and good humored, he had a special empathy for us graduate students.  I never had a course with him but benefited from his influence and I remember his saying to us as we tied ourselves in knots over our dissertations, "Don't get it right, get it written!"  We never had any doubts about his high expectations of students but I, at least, needed that nudge.  In the years since, my own students have heard the same slogan uttered in the same spirit.

Joan Cadden