A brief tribute to my friend, Patri Pugliese, son of sculptor Anthony Pugliese and fencer Julia Jones-Pugliese, who died Sunday, February 11, 2007

I count Patri Jones Pugliese among my dearest friends, although since I left the Boston area in 1985 I have only had a few conversations with him by phone and mail, and one visit. Patri was an historian of science. I helped him with some Latin for his PhD dissertation, The scientific achievement of Robert Hooke: method and mechanics. He taught at Harvard for many years, and also, more recently, he worked at MIT, although he never had a position that led to tenure. He also spent several years working for an innovative company, Dragon Systems, Inc., which produced speech recognition software.

Patri was interested in historical re-creation, dance, fencing, and costume. He had an immense library of original and secondary sources in these areas. I first met him in the context of mediaeval and Renaissance music and dance while I was an undergraduate at Harvard and he was a fairly new alumnus of the College and PhD student there. At the time, I had independently participated in similar activities - I might have told you of my fencing in house intramurals, and work with the Lowell House Opera and Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players as wardrobe master, and Libby had let me join her Lowell House Consort and had begun teaching me 16th century style composition, and I had already begun setting dance tunes at the time. I was immediately impressed with Patri’s knowledge and with his organizational and leadership qualities. Over what was probably a relatively short time, I think we developed a mutual respect that became friendship. Although I was gone from the Boston area for graduate school in Texas from 1976 to 1978, when I returned our friendship was renewed, and grew. We spent a great deal of time working on several projects, one of which led to the publication of our book, still well-regarded, Practice for Dauncinge: Some Almans and a Pavan, England 1570-1650. Patri allowed me to join his 19th century dance group as well. Later, of course, he founded the still-active Commonwealth Vintage Dancers. We also traveled together to several historical recreation events around New England and farther afield, and we spent pleasant weekends shopping at flea markets, antique stores, and yard sales around Boston.

Patri had Crohn’s disease, and I believe many of his friends knew that. Recently he received a diagnosis from his doctor of liver cancer. He faced that news with equanimity, and a determination to live his life fully, although I know the news was devastating to his family. I had a chance to visit Patri and his wife Barbara and his two daughters, Antonia and Julia, in May, 2006, and I was kindly received and entertained despite the stress on his family. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have seen him and to have renewed so easily an old friendship. Patri even invited me to go to a dance event in Connecticut that evening, though in the end we decided against it, especially since he and his family were feeling a bit tired, not surprisingly. Patri had just started chemotherapy for his cancer at that point. He did not expect to live a year, although he had not given up hope of as much time as he could claim from his disease. I am sure there are closer friends and colleagues of recent years who will miss him terribly. I, an older, more distant friend, certainly will.