If you've attended a street festival or fair in Cambridge, chances are you've run into Brother Blue.

Over the years, the eccentric storyteller, with his signature blue attire, became a personality in and around Harvard and Central squares.

Brother Blue, whose real name was Hugh M. Hill, died earlier this week. Read the Globe's obituary here.

Family friend and fellow storyteller Laura Packer of Malden said Brother Blue was not above playing the jester.

“It was important to him to be eccentric and be the fool in the room to grab attention so others would feel comfortable being a fool, too,’’ she said.

2008 photo/Elijah T. Ercolino

Robert H. Rines with a remote vehicle that took photographs in Scotland's Loch Ness

By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff

Even if Robert H. Rines had never seen what he believed was the hulking hump of a creature break the surface of Scotland's Loch Ness, his life would have captured imaginations and filled a lengthy resume.

Patents on his inventions number more than 80, including those for devices that sharpened the resolution of radar and sonar scanning. He founded Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and helped push patent and intellectual property law into the legal spotlight. He taught at Harvard and MIT and, along with being a lawyer, had degrees in physics and microwave technology. He also composed music for Broadway and shared an Emmy for a show that ran on TV and the stage.

Then there's the anecdote about an encounter with a man who heard Dr. Rines, then about 11, playing violin at a camp in Maine. Impressed, he asked to borrow a violin and played a duet with the young musician.

"That gentleman turned out to be Albert Einstein," said his wife, Joanne Hayes-Rines. "People just don't have stories like that in their lives."

A 1975 underwater photo by Rines appears to show the body, flipper, neck, and head of a large animal in Loch Ness.

Few people have lives to match the one lived by Dr. Rines, who died of heart failure Sunday in his Boston home. He was 87 and had spent the past 37 years lending his hefty intellectual bona fides to the search for a creature in the waters of Loch Ness.

"It looked like the back of an elephant," he told the Globe in 1997, recalling that moment in 1972 when he looked out the window of a friend's house in Scotland during a tea party and watched the curve of something he couldn't identify repeatedly disturb the water's surface. "I know there was a big unknown thing in that lake. That's why I haven't let go."

Clinging tightly to a pursuit that many dismissed as a fool's errand inevitably brought detractors, but Dr. Rines shrugged off criticism of his search, which never was rewarded with conclusive proof.

"There are few of us willing to risk our reputations on something as improbable as this, judged with such ridicule," he told Boston Magazine in 1998. "Scientists think there are other things to do for fame and fortune than something this crazy. So we do it quietly as a private venture and don't have to hear that we're 'crazy people chasing monsters and wasting public funds.' "

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Fordie Pitts Jr. participated in Massachusetts Golf Association tournaments for more than 50 years.

By Michael Whitmer, Globe Staff

The game's pull was there -- it always was -- and his employment choices provided the opportunity for a flexible work schedule. So Fordie Pitts Jr. planned accordingly, intent on playing as much amateur tournament golf as possible.

Most of the time, he used his own name, one that would find its way into record books and halls of fame. But every so often, in an attempt to get another event under his belt and not wanting his employer or friends to know how much golf he was actually playing, Mr. Pitts created an alter ego. And thus, Freddie Potts started showing up in the newspapers, always with a good score next to his name.

Mr. Pitts's nom de guerre was a harmless ruse, a clever ploy created by someone hooked on golf who became one of the most respected and distinguished amateur players in Massachusetts. Mr. Pitts, who lived in Scituate, died at his home Tuesday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 79.

There were many interests and multiple businesses, a large, loving family to share things with, but golf took up a big part of Mr. Pitts's life, and he was involved with the game for seven decades. Introduced to the sport as a young caddie, Mr. Pitts became not only a top-notch player, but also a mentor and a course owner and operator. Gathering as many friends as birdies along the way, Mr. Pitts left a lasting, indelible mark on the local golf scene.

"A legend, they call him. I'm a little uncomfortable with that title, but that's what they call him," said his son, Fordie Pitts III of Bridgewater. "Throughout his whole career, playing was his passion, but being involved with the game and promoting the game was a big part of him, too.

"If you were interested in the game, he'd be interested in you."

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Oh to have been present (and hungry) at those Smith College gatherings where the menus were shaped by alumnae famous for their cooking.

Gloria Negri's obituary this week of Charlotte Turgeon, the acclaimed cooking educator and writer who died at 97, recalled how Turgeon and her friend, the late Julia Child (both in Smith's class of 1934) would make meals and even entertain at the events. They both shared a passion for French cuisine.

Charlotte Turgeon (right) with Julia Child. (Smith College photo)

For the inauguration of Smith president Mary Maples Dunn in 1985, they settled on Child's recipe for Cornish Rock Hens.

When Smith inaugurated president Carol T. Christ in 2002, Child and Turgeon were joined by another famous foodie, Joyce Goldstein (class of '56 and author of "The Mediterranean Kitchen"). According to Food Management magazine, Turgeon consulted on the special tea events; Goldstein helped select recipes for some 4,000 lunches; and Child worked on the gala inaugural dinner.

Attendees dined, among other dishes, on a salad with warm goat cheese, roasted rack of lamb, and a dessert of Child's apple tarte tatin with Calvados creme fraiche.

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Globe file photo/Frank O'Brien

It was the voice that stayed with local hockey fans.

Longtime Bruins announcer Fred Cusick could turn “Score, Bobby Orr!’’ into a poetic couplet, Bryan Marquard wrote in his obituary for the broadcasting legend, who died Tuesday at age 90.

“The thing you remember about him was his style,’’ said Dave Goucher, the current play-by-play announcer for the Bruins on WBZ radio. “He wasn’t someone who yelled and screamed for the whole game. Some moments in games are bigger than others, and he was the master of that, knowing when the big moment was there and how to call it. When a goal was scored, you knew something had happened.’’

Click here for a sampling of that voice, along with some old game highlights, as Cusick (with color commentator Johnny Peirson) made the calls.

By Globe Staff

As the head of a famous family, Edward M. Kennedy was called upon to eulogize relatives at high-profile funerals. With an oratorical flair that combined wit and solemnity, Kennedy was known for his ability to stir mourners.

His poignant 1968 farewell at the funeral for his slain brother Robert drew worldwide attention. In subsequent years, he spoke not only at services for relatives but also at those for everyday Americans, such as the six Worcester firefighters killed in 1999.

AP file photo

Edward M. Kennedy delivering the eulogy at the funeral for his brother, Robert, at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Here are excerpts from some of his eulogies:

For his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, June 8, 1968, St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. (View video here.)

On behalf of Mrs. Robert Kennedy, her children and the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world. We loved him as a brother and father and son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters -- Joe, Kathleen and Jack -- he received inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He was always by our side.

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By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff

I am a professional funeral-goer. Sure, now that I'm middle-aged, I go to my share of memorial services for family and friends. But usually I attend funerals to gather information, as was the case Monday with the Mass for Jennifer Kelly of Milton.

Jennifer Kelly

At funerals of the famous -- such as broadcaster Curt Gowdy, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, or writer Norman Mailer -- reporters are kept away from the mourners. Not so when hundreds gather to celebrate the extraordinary life of an ordinary person like Mrs. Kelly.

Picking a pew early, before St. Agatha Church filled nearly to capacity, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with a few dozen mourners in the section to the right of the pulpit that offered a front row view of Mrs. Kelly's family. We watched as Mrs. Kelly's husband, Eric, gathered their three children -- Liam under one arm, Ava and Ronan under the other. Their pew seemed at once too vast for the four of them, and too small to contain their emotions.

Liam, the oldest child, cried often. At 9, he was best able to grasp the loss of a mother who went out for a run, collapsed from a respiratory attack, and never regained consciousness. A miniature version of his father, down to his haircut, glasses, and ears, he gave public expression to his family's private grief amid the prayers and rites of a packed funeral Mass.

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By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff

All reporters know they capture only a slender slice of life with each story, but when we attempt to sum up an entire life in an obituary, that slice is often painfully reduced to just those morsels that fit into several hundred words.

Struck and killed by a van two weeks shy of turning 32, Cary Girod had seemingly lived several lives. Her obituary captured her adventurousness, her college studies, and her jobs teaching math at private schools such as Buckingham Browne & Nichols in Cambridge, where she lived. And yet, because of space constraints some telling anecdotes didn't make it into what the Globe published Wednesday, which would have been her birthday.

Cary Girod

Reporters agonize over what to leave out, and I ruefully pushed the delete key on those stories that illuminated Cary Girod.

As with many people whose lives span several states and different pursuits, she had overlapping circles of friends in academia, the places she taught, and among those who hiked with her or participated in triathlons and other athletic competitions. As if engaging in her own form of shuttle diplomacy, she bore gifts from one group to another.

"She collected clothes that people didn’t want and put them in the trunk of her car," said her brother, Lewis Girod of Cambridge, "and she would pull something out and give it to someone and say, 'This is perfect for you. It comes from so-and-so.'"

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What does an obituary writer learn about life from covering the dead? We asked the Globe's Bryan Marquard, who has written nearly 800 obituaries since switching to that beat three and a half years ago. Every day, he opens a window into the lives of others, how people live, and how they're remembered. Here's what he told us.