The great dream of every teacher of mathematics is to find among his or her students a potential future mathematician, and to play a beneficial part in nourishing the mathematical growth of that student. There cannot be many joys that exceed such an experience. I have been very lucky in this aspect of teaching and I could easily draw up quite a list of former students who have given me this supreme joy. I doubt they realize how deeply I thank them for having been students of mine. I have selected the following reminiscence to illustrate this aspect of teaching, an aspect that makes many of us profoundly happy to be in the profession, and that makes all the frustrations and problems of the profession seem unimportant.

The sudden death of the mathematician Verner Hoggatt, Jr., who, among many other things, was the founder of The Fibonacci Quarterly, led, in August 1951, to the publication of a Memorial Issue dedicated to Vern. Because of my long association with Vern, first as his teacher and then as a collaborator and friend, I was invited to write the opening article for the issue. Herewith is that article.

It was in the mid-1940s that I left the Department of Applied Mathematics at Syracuse University in New York State to chair a small Department of Mathematics at the College of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. Among my first teaching assignments at the new location was a beginning class in college algebra and trigonometry.