Max visited Saunders Mac Lane in Chicago in 1970-71, and conversations with him then were both great fun and greatly influenced my work. To quote from the preface to ``The geometry of iterated loop spaces'', in which I introduced operads, ``The notion of `operad' defined in Section 1 arose simultaneously in Max Kelly's categorical work on coherence, and conversations with him led to the present definition''. It is a pity that, due to ill-advised suggestions by a referee a little later, his January, 1972, preprint ``On the operads of J.P. May'' was not published until 2006! It contains many often rediscovered insights. See http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/reprints/articles/13/tr13abs.html. We also had many conversations about his upcoming role as chair in Sydney. In those days, before e-mail and even xerox, the problem of relative isolation down under was much on Max's mind, and he thought that this was one good reason for following his heart and working to make Sydney a home for the development of the then underappreciated area of category theory that he so much loved. We are all in his debt for the marvelous way that he succeeded. Peter May