Joseph F. Hair Jr.: My Friend and Coauthor for Fifty Years Rolph E. Anderson A Long Journey I believe it was in the fall of 1967 that I first met Joe Hair. We were beginning doctoral students in the marketing department of the University of Florida. There were three others in our cohort: Roger Gates (now retired from University Texas—Arlington), Sandy Grossbart (now retired from University of Nebraska), and Jane Cromartie (now at University of New Orleans). Later, three more marketing doctoral students came into the program: Linda Golden (now at University of Texas—Austin), Richard Durand (now retired from American University), and Richard Mirzerski (now at University of Western Australia). All of these people were impressive in their own way, and I looked forward to interacting with and learning from them. Upon first meeting Joe, he came across to me as an unpretentiously self-assured, likeable, straight-shooting guy who could be trusted. He didn’t exactly match the image of the stereotypical intense doctoral student. Palatably confident and unflappable and more extroverted than most doctoral students, he was more comfortable at the University of Florida than the rest of us as he had started the Ph.D. program shortly after earning his B.A. and M.S. degrees there. By comparison, I felt like the old man. After earning an undergraduate degree in business from Michigan State University, I had served 4 years in the Navy, earned an M.B.A., worked for three Fortune 500 companies, and had just left a job as new product development manager with the Quaker Oats Company in Chicago. My Navy travels had taken me to several foreign countries while leading large departments of tough-minded sailors first aboard an aircraft carrier and then at Great Lakes Navy Base. So I had experienced things that my younger doctoral colleagues had not, and I felt reasonably competent at sizing up people and situations. After interacting with Joe over a few months and R. E. Anderson (*) Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail: andersre@drexel.edu # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 B. J. Babin, M. Sarstedt (eds.), The Great Facilitator, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06031-2_2 11