Regrets after a high school buddy dies

When one of your best high school  friends dies, what do you think? First of all, you ask: Why was it him and not me?

And then there are regrets: Why didn’t I keep in touch for 67 years? Why didn’t I value his friendship when we were kids?

Barr Rosenberg was no ordinary friend: He was a genius who became one of the country’s leading stock prognosticators but whose success led to a crushing downfall 17 years ago

Known as the “accountant of risk,” Barr invented a method in the 1970s of looking at more than a stock’s value—but how it was balanced by the rest of the market and the rest of the portfolio. He started a company, Barra Inc., which became enormously successful.

But just before the 2008 stock market crash, one of his forecast models was faulty, He waited too long to inform his investors, and they sued over their losses. The Securities and Exchange Commission banned him for life from stock trading. In his final years, he stuck to yoga and meditation with his wife  (since deceased) and  Tibetan culture before dying in February at age 82. He had been teaching these mindful practices since 1979.

 I felt that he made an honest mistake at a time when stocks were terribly shaky. What if the market had gone up?

As a teen, he contributed a lot to me:

—We played touch football and basketball at his nearby home in El Cerrito, Calif.

—He and his father, one of the leading American authorities on Shakespeare, took me with them three times to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

—He exposed me to intellectual friends and ideas I might never have experienced otherwise.

—He persuaded me to become his El Cerrito High School debate partner from 1957 to 1958, getting me versed in such arcane subjects as farm price supports and foreign aid policy. If you know me, I don’t come across as an argumentative debater.

What did I give him? When word got out that he had scarlet fever, our algebra teacher asked me in class how he was doing. “I don’t know,” I said. “He is kind of a pest.”

I guess it was hard to admit I was a close friend with a guy who was not particularly popular in school. He obviously had a very high IQ. I should have been flattered that such a brain wanted to hang out with me.

Thank you, Barr, for your impact on my life. I am pleased with your successes and hope you found comfort in your troubled later years.