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Texas A&M University math professor Raytcho Lazarov recalled first meeting Richard Ewing when Lazarov and his family left Bulgaria so he could assume a visiting professor's post at the University of Wyoming.
It was 1987 and Ewing, known by friends as Dick, was working as a professor at the university. Though Ewing was the younger of the two, Lazarov said, he immediately was struck by his brilliance, his breadth and his passion for work and research.
The Lazarov family went back to Bulgaria at the end of the school year and didn't return to Wyoming until Lazarov was hired as a full-time professor four years later. But the pair never stopped working together. Ewing often visited Bulgaria, Lazarov said. And when Ewing moved to College Station in 1992 to serve as the dean of the College of Science at Texas A&M, he brought his friend and colleague with him.
"He was the most encouraging and most helpful person that I have known in the whole of my life," Lazarov said, weeping as he remembered the man whom he thought of as a brother and mentor. "If you look at what he has done for so many international and national scholars, just encouragement, help and motivation."
Ewing -- a distinguished math professor who received accolades as both a researcher and an administrator -- died late Wednesday, after apparently suffering a heart attack while driving home from work.
The 61-year-old had worked for Texas A&M University or within an A&M System agency since 1992. Most recently, he had returned to the math department to continue his research and his work with A&M's Institute for Scientific Computation, which he founded.
Previously, he served as vice president for research but left that post in August following a federal investigation into A&M's select agent research.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered the university to temporarily halt part of its homeland security research after learning that four Aggie researchers accidentally had been exposed the previous year to bioweapons -- brucella and Q fever -- being studied on campus. Federal law required such exposures to be reported within one week.
Ewing had served as vice president since 2000. In August, he said he felt it was his duty to resign and attributed the problems to human error.
Though math was his first passion, the struggles that resulted for both him and Texas A&M as a result of the CDC investigation weighed on him immensely, family and friends said.
"How unfair the world is that he waited until he was no longer suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous administrative fortune to die," College of Science Dean Joe Newton said, adding that he was infused with rage upon learning of Ewing's death. "Hamlet would have said something like that."
Newton was head of Texas A&M's statistics department when Ewing took over as science dean in 1992. Six years later, he became executive associate dean under Ewing, serving as his second-in-command. Newton replaced Ewing in 2000, when he was promoted to the vice president's post.
Ewing had an extraordinary international presence, Newton said, recalling how his friend once joked that he had been to China 37 times. That was true. He was instrumental in the organization of the first China-U.S. Relations conference hosted at Texas A&M in 2003 -- an event that led to several research agreements and has since become a biannual event.
He also played a key role in establishing research programs at Texas A&M University's Qatar campus, Newton said, adding that people from all over the world had developed a great respect for Ewing.
"He had the ability to put together teams of people who could do far more than they ever thought they could," Newton said Thursday. "He was a great motivator and builder of collaboration. As dean, you can imagine that is hugely important. As vice president for research, that's even more important."
In a letter written Thursday to Texas A&M's International Board, Associate Vice President for International Programs Emily Ashworth described Ewing as a true scholar, researcher and champion of international education and research. Ewing, she said, played a critical role in expanding the university's international presence.
"Dick's vision, his unique approach to internationalizing Texas A&M, and his commitment to research and its impact on society, will be greatly missed," Ashworth wrote. "He touched many lives."
In the academic world, Ewing's passion and dedication for his work will serve as his legacy, colleagues said. But his wife, Rita Ewing, said he also would be remembered for being a dear husband and a wonderful father.
Her favorite memory of her husband goes back to when they first met, she said. She was a senior in high school, and he was a student at the University of Texas and a member of the Longhorn marching band. The next year, she said, she enrolled at Texas and joined the band just so she could march near him.
The two became best friends as they spent many practices and long bus trips together. They married upon her graduation in 1970 and had three sons, she said.
Richard Ewing was honorable, honest and hard-working, she said, and generous to a fault. No matter where he went, she said, people just seemed to want to follow him.
His death, she said quietly, was so sudden, so unexpected.
"I'll miss how affectionate he was toward me," Rita Ewing said. "He never didn't hold me or hold my hand. He really, really, truly loved me."
• Holly Huffman's e-mail address is holly.huffman@theeagle.com.
