The passing of Ted Bunce, owner of the Park Avenue Pub, saddens me. Ted and the Pub have meant so much to my life in Rochester.

Eastman Kodak brought me to Rochester in 1982, from its plant in Kingsport, Tennessee. At age 58, I came here to a new job and a new city, a double-whammy, some would say. I moved into an apartment on Park Avenue and made the passage from a Kingsport suburb, where the chief social life was Sunday School and church services on Sunday, in a community where Tennessee blue laws prohibited or restricted the sale of alcohol, to the rather Bohemian life of the Park Avenue area, where pubs and great restaurants were on every corner.

It didn't take me long to find the Park Avenue Pub. It was the beginning of a great relationship, where Ted, and later, his wife, Lisa, bar manager Gerry Gates, and bartenders Alan Potter and Bill (Mox) Luddy, helped me make the transition to Rochester life. (Ironically, my friend Alan died just a few weeks ago.)

After two or three weeks of stopping by the Pub after work, Gerry told me I appeared to be a nice guy and that he would introduce to a few people. I felt like an Eastern dude who had been accepted by the cowboys. I couldn't have felt prouder if I had been elected to the US Senate.

Ted Bunce was a trend-setter on Park Avenue. He was a great host, with just the right touch. In the 80's and 990's, his place was always packed. It was an upscale bar, a place where you could meet advertising executives, lawyers, actors and other theatrical-types, architects, college professors, and local politicians. The late architect Bob Macon drew for me his ideas for Eastman Place on a bar napkin, which I kept for years, and a University of Rochester professor and I discussed Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle while standing in the hallway to the men's room.

When I mentioned to Gerry that my ambition was to ride the Trans-Siberian Express, he introduced me to another university professor who had just returned from a Fulbright tour teaching at Moscow University, who, in turn, introduced me to an internationally known authority on Immanuel Kant, with whom I enjoyed many conversations.

It was at the Pub that I met Jay Halpern and his father, Sam, who would join me at the juke box to sing Al Jolson songs, and young Richard Sands, now head of the nation's largest winery, and his father, Marvin.

After 25 years in Rochester, I will move to Knoxville, Tennessee, in late March. I will miss the Park Avenue area and the Pub and places like it.

Doug Midkiff, Dartmouth Street, Rochester