Richard was born in Manhattan to Mery and Mark Nowogrodzki, who had miraculously escaped from Warsaw to NYC during World War II. He came to Cornell to study mathematics, eventually completing a PhD in entomology, studying honey bees. He worked for many years as a technical writer and editor at CBORD. He volunteered at the Ithaca Public Education Initiative and Ithaca’s Foodnet. He was an active member of the Trumansburg Volunteer Fire Department and spent many hours driving their ambulance.
As an undergraduate at Cornell, he met Anthony at the American Brahmin Bookstore and met PB in 1977. He was an active participant in many classes at Wisdom’s Goldenrod and helped out at many workdays, often as the “resident entomologist.” He served on the WG board three times.
But his real passion was for editing which became very obvious in the last years of his life. This work started with proofreading in 1983-89 for PB’s Notebooks. He did a great deal of indexing work on the republication of PB’s early books including The Wisdom of the Overself which is now in a new edition. He did an extraordinary amount of fact checking and proofreading of PB’s unpublished materials. He edited transcripts of classes led by Anthony. He also helped in the initial launch of the PB archiving project. PBPF Director Timothy Smith spoke highly of Richard’s work: “was and is the standout paradigm of accuracy, efficiency and dedication.”
