Richard died April 9, 2019, of complications of a stroke in Round Top, Texas. A lawyer, he was managing director and treasurer of Round Top Festival Institute, a 210-acre performance and education venue that he and concert pianist James Dick founded in 1971 in a foreclosed schoolhouse.

Born in Virginia, he moved to Texas with his mother after his father, an Air Corps captain, was killed in action in 1942 in the Battle of the Coral Sea. He came from Houston’s St. John’s School to Princeton, where classmates knew him as Roy. He majored in biology, ate at Key & Seal, and was active in Whig-Clio, crew, biking, Orange Key, the Tiger,and Glee Club. His roommates were Douglas Phillips and Bill Panzer. He was a Rotary fellow at Heidelberg University in Germany and studied law at the University of Texas.

Richard viewed the arts and culture as a unifier of society. For more than 49 years he helped create artistic collections that made the institute a research center. Friends remember him as extremely bright, warm and welcoming, creative, a man of exquisite hospitality and far-reaching vision. “A sense of humor as big as the state of Texas,” wrote one. 

Richard is survived by cousins, nieces, and nephews.

Undergraduate Class of 1963