Goodbye to a good friend and University of Houston Professor

[stoneclaw]

my condolences to your friend. It's always a shock when someone who's made a difference in your life passes.

[htexas]

I was also in Professor Gorman's intro to physics class during his last semester at UH...and I was quite affected by his passing because only the day before I had called to thank him for his guidance and motivation.

I never thought I could pass physics but Gorman constantly told me to "think," "try harder" and "believe" and improvement would be certain. He was right.

Out of my entire career at UH only 2 professors truly impacted me and Professor Gorman was one of them. He had a tough love method of teaching his students that helped those of us who stuck through to the end. "No. I'm not going to spoon feed this to you."

...and hey...he LOVED Tom Petty! RIP Professor Gorman, thank you so much for everything.

[modutch1]

Dr. Gorman was an amazing human being, despite his faults. I met him a few years ago and talked to him frequently from the time I met him. You could talk to him about nearly anything. He loved baseball and was even in the NY Times (his favorite paper) once, talking about physics and baseball, two things he loved. ([URL="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B1FFA3D590C768CDDAD0894DA4044 82&scp=21&sq=michael%20gorman%20houston%20tx&st=cs e"]BASEBALL - BASEBALL - It Doesn't Make Sense To Pitch to Bonds Now - NYTimes.com[/URL])

You always knew where you stood with him. He told you what he thought straight up, even if it was inappropriate at times. If he liked you, he told you.

He gave me lots of insights about being a teacher and higher education, which is what I'll probably miss the most as I'm working on my graduate work.

I will never forget him.