The NPHS Reunion Interview with Richard Muglia, Class of 1969

Richard Muglia, Yellowstone River, 2018.

What is your biggest fear? Hopelessness.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?  Watching my wife catching (and releasing) a Yellowstone Cutthroat trout.

Who are your heroes in real life?  Firemen, soldiers and cowboys.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?Paying off my college loans.

What is your greatest extravagance?  A 911 Carrera S that stays in the garage six months a year (we live in New England).

What words or phrases do you most overuse?Lachrymose.  

What is your most marked characteristic?  Razor focus and an incredible Italian nose.

What is your greatest regret?  That rejection slip from Langley.  And not taking Trig.

What is your motto?  Fidelium, Fortitudo, Verum.  

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?   A great memory.  Which I lack.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?  Agreeing with others when I really don’t.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?  A sense of moral superiority.

Muglia family home on the
range in Sept. 2017 at
Hubbard Lodge in Montana.
From left to right: Richard,
daughter Alice, wife Ellen
and son Sam.  

What do you most value in your friends?  A sense of humor. And fierce loyalty, which they deliver in spades.

On what occasion do (did) you lie?Every Saturday in the fall of the year throughout high school. I’m 5’6” and 130 lbs.—check out the football programs…

Who are your favorite writers?Ernest Hemingway, Ward Just and Jay McInerney.   And Herman Melville when I can’t sleep.

What are your favorite names?  Sam and Alice. Or Alice and Sam, depending on who’s in favor at any particular moment.

What is the quality you most like in a man?  Moral courage.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?  The same quality I admire in a man, there should be no light between genders on this.

Which talent would you most like to have?  The ability to make a fire without matches.  And to barbeque like the other men…

How would you like to die?  Sitting in a rocking chair in our barn, listening to Chet Baker sing My Funny Valentine.  And holding my wife’s hand.

130 pounds drippings wet: Richard Muglia kneeling above #40 Dave Mills
and to the left of #75 Mike Maresca.