 When I first met Larry it was at a fee event and he says what do you do for a living? And I said, I just started as a New York City high school teacher. He was flabbergasted and brought me around to all these people at fee introducing me saying, Rob's a New York City high school teacher. Every time I see Larry I think of that moment and how genuinely excited he was to meet me and yet here was the famous Larry Reid who has done so much for the Liberty Movement and he was impressed to meet me. That makes me smile every time I think about that. I've known Larry Reid for a long time. Obviously he's much, much older than I am having founded feedback in the 1940s. Oh, that was Leonard Reid. I first met Larry Reid when he was a college student at Grove City College and he came to a fee seminar. I was working as the summer intern and I knew from that first meeting that Larry had a passion for the ideas of liberty and human dignity and free markets. Early on in 1990 when I began my work at Acton I met a remarkable guy down the road so to speak in Midland Michigan named Larry Reid who was at the time the president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. I worked with Larry for 13 years shoulder to shoulder at the Mackinac Center and in every way he was my mentor. The first big event that I was attending as a young libertarian was at the Mackinac Center and this actually has changed my life. First time I met Larry was at evenings at fee. He was a speaker and gave an electrifying talk about ideas that I wasn't even familiar with regarding American history and the whole myth of FDR and so forth. I thought there was a magical move to have Larry Reid to come to fee. After Leonard Reid passed away in 1983, fee drifted in some sense because it was a different world. It was to a significant extent living off of its past and without Larry coming in my suspicion is that fee would have been folded into some other organization as opposed to the new and vibrant life in which it has. The love of the organization and the love of liberty and the love of teaching are ultimately what attracted Larry to fee. As a fellow board member he was chairman of the board at fee and exhibited terrific leadership in that role. We were looking for a new president 10 years ago. Then we hired Larry as president of fee and he continued to impress with not only his wisdom but grace and leadership. He had a profound effect in Michigan and to go on and do what he's done at fee has just been remarkable. As much as Leonard Reid was the founder, Larry Reid was the re-founder of fee. He took an organization that had clear cause and long history well established onto an entirely new path. Larry wanted to move fee to Georgia and I couldn't admire him more for that. We now have a beach head. We've got modern facilities that enable fee to go to a whole new level. And of course it's now three times what it was when Larry first came on board. Not many people can be good academics, good writers and manage a large organization. That seems impossible. It's hard enough to figure out how to write an op-ed on a free market topic. But Larry's got that combination. One of the things too about Larry that has always affected me is his stress on how important character is for having a free society and the guy has impeccable character. Larry is an incredibly kind person and he sets the standards for really what the principles of fee mean in our daily lives. Yes he's an economist, yes he's a great author but he is an amazing friend, mentor and inspiring individual. He is bigger than life in the eyes of so many. He's so well spoken and he's so smart and so knowledgeable. The more I get to know him as a person the more I work with him professionally the more my admiration for him has only grown. If you're involved in the freedom movement and you've got an idea that Larry can help you with he'll be there for you. He's been a driving force in just making sure that we are internally sticking to the values that we promote. Larry represents the very best in what I hope that he inspires people to feel. And anybody who knows Larry knows that he is an optimist. In fact he wears the badge pathological optimist with pride. I believe he lived in Michigan, he was driving in the winter. On an icy road in the dark and his car began to skid and it hit the side of the road and actually went down a ravine rolling over as it went down. And as his car was sort of going end over end. Larry swears that the thought that was going through his mind was I'm going to be able to get a new car out of this. And he concludes the story with, and I did get a new car out of that. The thing that I like the most about Larry is his love for life. It really is contagious and inspiring. He always has some grand adventure that he's been on. When we go to new cities he is always excited to try a new restaurant that's in an interesting building or go see an interesting historic site. He is perpetually curious, perpetually excited. Some of the highlights of my summers have been on the river with Larry going fly fishing in Colorado and Idaho. And I caught a fish that was this big. He still holds it against me to this day that I don't really want to go fishing with him and I know other people would kill for the opportunity to spend any time with Larry even if it meant fishing if they didn't like fishing. No matter what the situation, Larry has got more jokes than anybody I have ever come across in my life. Larry has a love for what about Bob? He and I will rattle off some lines together, particularly the corn being eaten in one scene and how Bill Murray describes it as, oh is this hand shocked? Is this hand shocked? Larry always gets a big kick out of that. Larry taught me that pessimism is self-fulfilling, that optimism is the fuel that we need in a business with goals as big as ours and opponents as strong as ours. Larry very much is one of those rare charismatic figures who not only knows the ideas and values of freedom but can articulate them in winsome and persuasive ways. You know all too often in the freedom movement we're talking about public policy issues, we're talking about regulations, we're talking about abstract ideas and Larry really remarkably has the ability to humanize how important freedom is. When I first heard him speak, made me realize that economics can be connected to real life, economics can be personal. Larry had the ability to pick up the subtleties of the original concept of fee and I remember Leonard read saying to me so often that we have a different style, we don't browbeat people, we don't force people to accept our ideas. I think his words to me was, what we do is bring ideas to the threshold of people's consciousness and then we back off because he said if we do it that way and the ideas permeate their mind, they become their ideas and those ideas are with them forever. The first time I saw Larry speak I was shocked how engaged the entire audience was. He is always so endearing and compelling just when he talks and he just always draws me in with his stories. Going to gatherings of various freedom-oriented organizations he's surrounded by like the flight pattern around LaGuardia Airport and people are circling around Larry hoping to get in and have an opportunity to speak with him. It's funny now, almost 20 years later when all of us have grasped this idea that we need to become better storytellers but that first encounter with Larry Reid was built around a story that left us all in awe. His blinking lights story and feeling like we were part of something special. As Larry is telling this story I looked over my friend Peter and also his parents, Marta and Lek who lived under the system in Poland and the whole family just has tears streaming down their face and it was an incredibly poignant and touching moment and made Larry's great story all that much more personal. Larry is an impossible act to follow. There's just no one who can talk about character and bring that message of freedom as a way of life quite like he can. The movement as a whole had neglected educating the next generation and we knew that Larry shared that belief. He has spoken in front of hundreds of thousands of young people like me and spreading the ideas of liberty every single day. Every time we have a new batch of summer interns he reaches out to me and asks for their bios and their pictures and on day one when they come into the office he greets them all by their name and he asks them all about where they go to school, what they're studying. We've been sending our Mankow Scholars to fee over many years for internships. When they return to the office for their report back session all they want to talk about is Larry. Larry has been one of the best messengers that our movement has ever had. Today at our Alice Liberty Forum I'm sporting this Bastiat tie. There aren't too many who are close to Frederick Bastiat but Larry is certainly on that short list. A lot of us will talk about Hayek and Friedman and Mises and sometimes these ideas are pretty abstract. One of the things that Larry has done is to articulate the ideas of freedom in simple plain language. The articles that he used to contribute to the Freeman in my education as I was trying to catch up having never been really exposed to classical liberal ideas during my college years. I think one of the things that has been most memorable to me is the seven principles of sound public policy and the first of those which is that free people are not equal and equal people are not free. Every time I think about it I think there's so few words and just they mean so much. He makes a convincing case why we need liberty needed on an international level not only here in the United States but around the world. People know Larry outside the U.S. He has a huge audience in letting America especially being a European there was no infrastructure whatsoever in the libertarian movement. Now we are a large entity we are operating across Europe in 40 countries with the free market road show. We got started because of the great work that Larry did and I wish we had more Larrys in Europe. I know so many think tanks in Asia who relate to Phi now as their role model they say to me I want to be like Phi why because Phi is reaching these interesting new audiences that others have never reached before. I love you Larry you know you have been such an amazing force in my life. For me he's actually been a mentor and he doesn't even know it. Larry you're an amazing person you are a great leader and you're a legend. It's really not too much to say that you have made the world for your place. The world is a much better place because Larry Reid has made a difference in it. I look forward to many many more years of learning from you and hopefully following your example. At Phi we are particularly grateful to Larry for putting us on the path of rapid growth and immense success over these past 10 years. I couldn't thank him more. Phi is home it's in his heart. It's always been a huge pleasure to work with him. I couldn't have asked for a better partner in advancing these ideas. It's been a much better movement because of the contributions you've made. You have been an inspiration. Thank you Larry for all the mentorship all the guidance all the kindness. For all that you've done for Phi as an organization all that you're going to continue to do. From the bottom of my heart thank you so much for your friendship, your leadership and your stewardship of this organization. We appreciate you and we appreciate your walk with Liberty. For all of your hard work and your optimism. You truly are a real hero. Your work has been fundamental in creating a new Phi and creating an awesome new future for us. Thank you Larry for everything that you have done. Congratulations on all you've accomplished. You have influenced me and my thinking and I'm a better classical liberal thanks to you. You've inspired me. You've inspired thousands upon thousands of others as a great champion of human freedom. You're among the best ever there was. Not only is Phi better today because of you the entire freedom movement is. Thanks for all the help you've given. Thanks for all the inspiration. Thank you for all the kindness you've shown me through the years. Thank you Larry. Look forward to collaborate with you in the coming decades. On the behalf of Greek people I want to thank you for everything you've done for us. We are proud to be members of the same movement with you. Thank you Larry for all that you've done and for the next 30 years of you spreading messages about Liberty around the world. Congratulations for everything that you've done Larry. You're one of the first people to give me a contract to produce a video advocating a free society. So thank you Larry for my career and also everything you've done for Liberty around the world. You are the guiding star of the kind of person that I aspire to be. You're an inspiration to me and so many others and I thank you for being a great example of the message about character that you so eloquently talk about. Larry, you're not leaving. I don't care. You're staying. We're not letting go. You're not gonna stop promoting freedom because we know you Larry. This isn't a goodbye. This is a thank you. Thank you Larry. Thank you Larry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Larry. Thanks Larry for everything. Thank you Larry. For my heart Larry, thank you so much. Now, back to work.