A Tribute to Robert B. Rutherford Jr.

It seems fitting that this tribute to Rob Rutherford appear in this special issue of Education and Treatment of Children. This issue, and the 30 journal issues, monographs, and edited texts that preceded it, is based on the annual proceedings of the Teacher Educators for Children with Behavioral Disorders (TECBD) conference, which Rob organized and hosted for 31 years. In preparing to write this piece, I re-read the special issue of the Council for Children with Behavior Disorders Newsletter (Vol. 20, No. 6) to which a number of his friends and colleagues. Of the more than a dozen colleagues, current and former students, and friends of Rob who wrote, virtually all mentioned the seminal role that the TECBD conference has played in their careers, as well as the contributions this venue has made to advancing the professional fields of special education, juvenile justice, school-based mental health, school and clinical psychology. What also struck me is that each person wrote about how special Rob was on many levels—as a teacher and mentor, a researcher and scholar, an organizational leader, family member, and a friend. The sadness of his loss remains painful, yet there is solace in knowing that Rob's impact on all of us, and on the field, will go on and on.

Those of us in higher education are (somewhat unfortunately) in the habit of measuring a person's impact in terms of numbers: publications and presentations, matriculating doctoral students, committees chaired, grants received, extramural funds garnered, international professional trips, awards and recognitions received, offices held in professional organizations, and so on. By any such numerical standard, Rob clearly had risen to the top: over 150 journal articles, book chapters, edited texts and monographs; at least that many conference presentations; scores of successful doctoral students, dozens of state and federal grants totaling millions of dollars; a dozen or more invited trips abroad; recipient of national awards, including the CCBD 2006 Leadership Award and two Fulbright-Hayes Scholarships; 18 years of service to CCBD, including 6 as editor of Behavioral Disorders and as CCBD secretary, president, and governor. Each contributor to the special issue made note of these accomplishments, but each person also lauded Rob's great humanity. For all his stature, he remained a warm and caring person, who gave freely of his time, energy, and expertise—even his financial resources—to his students, colleagues, and friends. He had a unique gift for seeing the potential in others for making contributions to the science he believed in and the children and youth who benefit from it, and for helping them to realize that potential.

I hope that these broad brush strokes convey how much Rob was valued as a person and as a professional. Regarding TECBD, and the conferences on which the articles appearing in this special issue of Education and Treatment of Children are based, there's a more specific story to tell. In 1970, a group of higher education professionals who identified themselves with the fledgling area of special education for students with emotional disturbance, got together to talk about this new field and what we might do with it. As I recall, that first meeting was in Gainesville, Florida, and hosted by Lyndal Bullock, who was, like most of us, a brand new assistant professor at the University of Florida. We spent a day or two getting acquainted with one another, asking ourselves what we thought we could accomplish, and complaining to the unlucky federal official in the Department of Education who was designated to coordinate personal preparation grants to support our field. Oh yes, and we created a name for our group: Teacher Educators for Children with Behavioral Disorders, and we decided it would be cool to meet annually to share our research, kick around ideas, and, of course, abuse our federal coordinator. I've sort of lost track of the sequence of events for the next several years, but I do recall that we had an annual meeting in Las Vegas in 1973, and in Albuquerque in 1976, but that was about it. That is, until Rob Rutherford...