In the second world war, while serving in the Japanese navy, he met a fellow enthusiast for technology, Masaru Ibuka.
On the rare occasion I ran into a fellow enthusiast, we would speak in hushed voices, wary of public ridicule.
He was a gregarious and accomplished flier of radio-controlled helicopters, Butch Wellbeck, a fellow enthusiast who had met him on several occasions, said in a phone interview.
Sam Farber, a museum board member, recalled coming upon the paintings at the antiques show with his son, John, a fellow enthusiast of outsider art.
She has also raised eyebrows by supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, a fellow enthusiast of acerbic Twitter postings who has little support among minorities.
A friend and fellow enthusiast, Harvey Siegel, a New York developer, had recently revived the Virginia International Raceway in a depressed area around Danville, Va.
She calls DfID a "thought-leader and innovator among donors in the last five to ten years", and is delighted that Mr Mitchell, a fellow enthusiast, seems ready to apply the idea.
Luckily, he had a good rapport with his son-in-law, John Uselton, now 40, a fellow enthusiast of home brewing, wine collecting and spirits — with whom he found he could start a business.
On an October morning he welcomed me and a fellow enthusiast to a 50-acre farm at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, a part of Cornell University that houses the Agriculture Department's collection.
His hobbies do not include eradicating poverty or consorting with world leaders, but he is, it emerged recently, a keen twitcher, and is sometimes joined on birdwatching trips by fellow enthusiast Jimi Goodwin.
Although notoriously aloof, Blunt had spotted a spirited fellow enthusiast for the most exhilarating, if controversial, of all Roman architects – indeed of all architects of all eras – and Borromini had certainly got his teeth into Downes.
