A few years back . . . , I asked him to talk about his early life. His father, he said, had been an electrician and handyman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He could fix anything and everything, but he steadfastly refused to teach Roger any of his skills. I asked him why.

“He’d come home at night after spending the day in the offices of these professors, and he’d say to me, almost in awe, ‘Roger, they just sit there and think.’ That’s the life he wanted for me, he didn’t want me fixing things like he did.'”

Roger’s dad got what he wanted, and we all have been the richer for it.

Kenneth Turan, “Remembrance: Roger Ebert, film’s hero to the end” (L.A. Times, April 4, 2013).