'Because I could not stop for death...

...he kindly stopped for me,' wrote Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets.

My longtime friend and mentor, Bob Sharp, has taken the same approach to the cancer now ravaging him in Pasadena. He's already written what we hacks call his obit:

'Robert L. Sharp, 71, retired international banker with postings in Manila, Hong Kong, and 12 years in Tokyo. He served as the elected president of the American Chamber of Commerce of Japan and was long-time board member of the Japan America Society of Southern California and Nishimachi International School.

'He leaves his wife Judith. six adult children and eight grandchildren. A long-time logophile, Mr. Sharp hopes no one is so bereft in vocabulary to have to use the hackneyed cliché “battle” in describing his illness.'

And in both the doing and the saying, maybe you can see why I feel so indebted to him for his friendship and guidance for more than three decades. He's from the Central Valley originally, though a tour as a Navy officer put the wanderlust in his wingtips for good.

We met in Tokyo in 1976. By then he was 'an old Asia hand,' that designation some wore with pride, some with fear, most of us with a mixture of both. He'd been in the Philippines and Hong Kong before Japan, and as head of one of the major international banks, he was automatically a source for someone reporting for a business/financial newspaper.

So we met. And talked. And repeated it at regular intervals. Sharp-san (the Japanese sometimes pronounced our surnames almost the same) saw the major issues of the time with a clear vision, when so many others making policy and money had their eyes wide shut about Japan.

He made a lasting favorable impression during his dozen years in Japan--and he may even have surpassed that once he and his family returned to Los Angeles from Tokyo.

The same year I did.

So 6,500 miles east of where we met, we resumed our friendship. Bob was a classic Type B personality--he wanted to make things happen, but he also wanted to stay in the background, let others take credit.

When he started the Nichibei Study Group, which literally means 'Japan-America Study Group,' he let the venues and their speakers be the stars. Half of us in the group were Yanks, the other half Japanese. Only requirement for membership was that you had some tie to Japan (if American) and vice versa. Most of the Japanese were expat businesspeople living in Southern California.

What made Nichibei different and fun was Bob's insatiable curiosity about wherever he was living. For more than a decade, once a month (except in the summer, when many of our Japanese members went back home), we'd visit cool, neat, weird and unknown parts of the Los Angeles Basin: a black firefighters museum; the Japanese-American National Museum; a German restaurant with the consul general; a mosque; a mariners' museum; the offices of architects who'd done several projects in both Japan and the U.S.; a tour of downtown L.A.

In pre-e-mail days, Bob would fax us the venue and directions, and from all over several counties, a couple dozen women and men would wend their way to someplace they'd probably never been--and probably would never have gone, except for Bob Sharp.

In that way, we learned about our surroundings--and about one another.

More than any single person I've met, Bob helped Japanese and American folks understand one another better.

They say that all good things must end someday. As the economies of both countries faltered early in the 21st century, people couldn't make it to Nichibei meetings. As attendance fell, Bob pulled the plug. But we had a fantastic roast/appreciation dinner for him in 2003 at the L.A. Athletic Club. I was emcee and got my share of jibes in--but so did a lot of other folks.

Bob, with his Gatsby hair style and San Joaquin Valley bray, laughed harder than anybody.

Bob's a renaissance man, so besides banking, informal diplomacy, education and other fields, he's also a writer. He had a special column in the Japan Times for several years, both while he was in Tokyo and later.

Since I've been in Merced--and even before--he'd critique my own writing. And I began thinking of him when I wrote. Which is exactly what the best boss I ever had told me: keep a specific individual reader in mind, Mike, so you can reach your audience.

For a long time, it was my mom--seventh-grade education, circus performer and one of the smartest people I've ever known.

For quite awhile now, the reader I have had in mind has been Bob Sharp.

He keeps me on my toes about both logic and language. And he's a font of ideas for both subject and style.

So you see where I'm going with this: if death does indeed stop for him before long, who will I think about as the person out there reading what I write?

Meantime, wanted to record some things about Bob Sharp before that happens. As my other reader, my mom, always used to say, bring me the flowers when I'm alive. They won't do me a damned bit of good when I'm under the ground.

So I'll end this with another quote from Emily Dickinson, thinking of Bob Sharp, thanking Bob Sharp:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.