Respect, Richardson says, was a value ingrained in him by his experience in World War II.

As part of a regimen that landed at Normandy on D-Day, Richardson saw many fellow Americans fall to German gunfire.

"It is impossible in those circumstances to retain whatever little there was of the attitude that anybody is better, more significant, than anybody else," he says.

"If I had not already been a small-deed Democrat, that experience would have made me one," he says.

His son sees the Normandy landing in a slightly different light, pointing to it as an example of his father's spirited nature.

"He was a medic who hit the beaches on Normandy on D-Day; he got himself blown up for driving over land mines a couple of times," Henry Richardson says.

"He certainly felt very engaged and alive during that process; he didn't shrink from it," he says.

Some Work and Some Play

But Richardson has not been limited by his professional roles.

He is a father of three, a contented grandfather and an avid fly-fisher.

Ernest J. Sargent '40, a longtime friend of Richardson, describes him as having "more capability and talent than anybody I've ever seen."

However, Sargent adds, laughing, "there are certain things where he's not quite as good as you might expect--namely, he and I go fishing a lot."

But Sargent concedes that although he frequently catches more fish than Richardson, his fishing partner is "very intense about what he does."

And that intensity includes family, too.

Henry Richardson recalls the times at the family cabin on Cape Cod, where Elliot and his family would join his two brothers and their wives and children.

As the nine Richardson cousins sat around the living room, one of the brothers would read aloud from a Sherlock Holmes novel, a longtime tradition at the cabin.

But Richardson's literary interests are not confined to Conan Doyle mysteries. Sargent says he is impressed by Richardson's "very wide scope of interests; he has knowledge that is much more than the average reader's in any area."

Furthermore, Sargent says, "[Richardson's] command of the English language and his ability to write is extraordinary; it is a talent which is very significant in terms of what he does."

Richardson's secret for such success is simple.

"Do it with the whole heart and the whole mind," he says.