By Regan Kerney
The Lawrenceville School
Dec. 22, 2001

    I don't know whether technology is the end-all it's knocked up to be, but technology introduced me to Bob Frezza. We met when he was a beginning staff member down at the Lawrence, back when I regularly spent my midweek nights submerged in the basement of Pop Hall, trying to help Ed Robbins convince a dozen Lawrenceville seniors to put the paper to bed before 8 o'clock the next morning.
    Many stars have emerged from the ranks of the Lawrence over the years, most often because of their qualities as writers or sometimes as editors, but Bob had something going for him that separated him from the pack right from his second form year: he was organized. This is not a traditional personal at the paper.
    Bob knew how to put the paper out well, and on time, and he understood far better than the rest of us the technology we were using to do it. Bob showed us how we could bend the technology to our own uses, rather than having it bend us. He did this so quietly, and pleasantly, and artfully, that he became the first fourth former I can recall to rise to the editors' ranks, and the next year, he became the editor in chief.
    No surprises there. Bob was as good at managing people as he was at managing technology. He did it the old-fashioned way. He persuaded everybody that they were doing what they wanted to do, even though they were actually all doing what HE wanted them to do. His best weapon was his dry humor.
    Bob could have passed himself off as a technocrat, the ultimate technology geek in a world that was bursting into a technology bloom, but there was a lot more to his personality -- and his sensitivity -- than that. I discovered that after Bob showed up in two of my courses his senior year.
    In the winter, he wrapped up his participation in a course called War & Leaders with a stirring discussion of war as a human drama. His dexterous citation of British poets and their work to illustrate his ideas struck me then with its originality and clarity, and it still strikes me as such. The computer geek was not such a computer geek after all. He understood the human dimension of poetry and the richness of the emotions from which it rose. He did this with graceful, effortless posture, as if it all came naturally to him.
    A lot of good minds believe that the field of economics is a sham science that doesn't do anybody much good. I was at a conference recently at which somebody said that the difference between an economist and an accountant is that an economist is somebody who wanted to become an accountant, but didn't have the personality. I admit there are days when I, too, feel like this, but since I teach economics, I prefer to call it an adolescent discipline that is continually rediscussing its identity, and I welcome good students into this discussion.
    In the spring of his senior year, I welcomed Bob Frezza into an introductory course in macroeconomics. What a wonderful experience that was, for me, for macroeconomics, and, I hope, for Bob. While much of the class was committing the material to rote, or consigning it to the dustbin of useless knowledge, Bob was dissecting each idea, and demanding a full explanation of the assumptions behind it. He was, as they say, looking for the hole in the donut.
    Beginning economics courses spend a good deal of time talking about price inflation, and the plain it puts economies through. I thought that the textbook we were using -- which was written by a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board -- did a rather complete job of covering this, but Bob, as usual, wanted more. And as usual, he stayed late after class to get it.
    Finally, Bob came to me with a proposition, fairly nicely expressed. He said that if we could harness inflation at a moderate, constant rate by taking the lurches out of it, we could probably survive it pretty much unscathed, the way the passengers on a luxury train, hurtling down the tracks at 100 miles per hour, have no sense they are in motion as they quietly sip their martinis. (The train idea was Bob's. I get credit for the martinis.)
    We chewed this over at length, with me now searching out the hole in HIS donut, but within a few days, Bob had moved on to some other topic about the economy, and -- with his vigorous skepticism now refocused -- the constant-inflation hypothesis fell away, forgotten.
    A year or so later, while reading a somewhat arcane paper on monetary theory -- this is how economics teachers cure insomnia -- I was stunned to see what I think we should call Frezza's Law not merely resurrected, but turned into a full-blown policy proposal for the Federal Reserve. It turns out, if you believe the prominent professor of economics who wrote the piece, that a little constant inflation should turn out to be better for the economy than no inflation at all. Since the fellow who wrote this has a Ph.D. from MIT and writes a column for The New York Times, we should probably take him about as seriously as we can take an economist.
    I know that most of you will not find that very exciting. In fact, I propose that if any among you does, then he or she probably needs to find some new hobbies. But for me it underlines the idea that if economics teachers recruited students the way coaches recruit athletes, I would have recruited Bob for my subject and promised him a substantial signing bonus. I would do this knowing that he was going to take most of what I taught him, and turn it on its head, but that in so doing, he was going to make it better. Or at least make it useful.
    As a student, as a person, as a friend, Bob had a luminous mind and a comforting aura that shed light and warmth on everything and everybody around him. I know I can still see that light, and feel that warmth. I think you can, too.

-- Regan Kerney

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