Floyd Downs has been the chair of the Biology department the entire time I have been here. Now the chair of a department is a position of some power, some responsibility, and a lot of headaches. At least that is how I explain his unusual behavior of mumbling to himself and continually banging his head against the wall whenever I come into to talk to him. Floyd has been the chairman the entire time I have been here and during that time he has been in a perpetual state of retirement. I haven’t figured out if being a chair makes you want to quit or if making you the chair is the department’s way of saying get out of here and Floyd is just particularly tenacious.
Yes Floyd’s gradual departure has really emphasized the word gradual. And I think this little party is just our way of saying, "Go on, we dare you! Retire already!"

Nah -- I think we’d all be sad if Floyd were to leave. After all he has continually amazed us with his many abilities including some quite remarkable budgetary feats he has accomplished over the years. Floyd’s recent decision to go half-time is a case in point. In a remarkable display of budgetary frugality he managed to convince the college to pay him half as much for nearly the same amount of work he was doing before. He may have been around the formaldehyde a little longer than is recommended. Anyway with the money the college saved, we were able to purchase a new power mac computer with an optional faculty member (our very own Dr. Grinnell). The computer occupies room 205 and sometimes Dr. Grinnel can be seen there too.

No, Floyd’s frugality knows no bounds and one case in point has been his enormous preoccupation with copper. To fully explain this, Biology’s own Barb Moore.

Barb Moore story

Flyod’s ability to save money has dogged him over the years as he attempts to enjoy himself on vacations. Floyd is simply too cheap to actually go on a vacation. What he does is buy postcards and mail them to his friends so as to be able to engage in vacation talk. Unfortunately his frugality does him in. His postcards are always from various places in Holmes County.

But I do understand that he did go on at least one vacation. Dr. Perley has some rather fond memories of that event that he’d like to share.

Jim Perley Story

Yes Floyd Downs can’t throw anything away. This has collided with his complete bewilderment by modern technology. He still addresses memo’s to me with the name of the last untenured member because he doesn’t want to throw away a perfectly good memo form. However, last year, after he became convinced that the computer would actually replace the typewriter, he decided to embrace the new technology. I think it was when he found out that rather than throw away documents he could just get a bigger hard drive and actually save everything he has ever written. He has done away with the trash can icon on his desk and simply has one called “the file cabinet”.

Speaking of his office, Floyd has a quite remarkable one. Mountains of papers from ancient eras, books from before the printing press, and enough preserved specimens to rival the La Brer Tar pits. If any of you have seen it then you know very well that it could be an IS project for some archaeology major with a brave heart, a sharp shovel, and good map. But deep within that historical trash heap we affectionately call Floyd’s office, lurks a person who has become as much a part of the Biology department as the persistent smell of formaldehyde, Floyd Downs himself.

Floyd has managed to touch a number of us through his many years here, but none so hard as each year’s crop of First Year students. This precious and naive group of students come to know the Biology Department first through Floyd’s musing on the inner workings of life’s many creatures (but none of the plants). I truly think that students acquire a fondness for this old codger and part-time chairman. And the best example I can think of is the time Dr. Morgan and I set about to play a joke on Dr. Down’s on the occasion of his last lecture in Introductory Biology. We played the parts of acouple of old German professors who were about to collect the retiring Professor Downs for historical preservation. After we professed our desire to preserve him for future posterity and Anatomy & Physiology classes, we left. The next lab period we had a skeleton in place that we had labeled as “the late Floyd Downs”. I think it is a great tribute to the amount of affection the First Years had for him, and I’m afraid their naivete, that several of them were very touched by his sacrifice and desired a small bone or fragment as a momento. When I informed them that this was all a big joke, they simply said -

"Darn - we thought we wouldn’t have anymore of those stupid quizzes before lab. Now we really have a bone to pick with Dr. Downs."