The Way It Is

The Way It Is

The Way It Is by poet William Stafford:
“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.”

Two of my former teachers died this winter. Ralph W. Remmes died of congestive heart failure. He was 79-years-old. David Savage died from kidney cancer. He was 71-years-old. These two men didn’t know each other. These two men lived in different places, came from different backgrounds, developed different orientations, lived far different lifestyles. One was a family man. The other was a loner. One had a passion for research, for uncovering. The other built a mystery. He embellished. He developed a personal mythology, the folklore of Remmes. One man always went by his first name. The other man always went by his family name. And yet these two men understood the thread. They lived by the tread.
     David was a college professor in Portland, Oregon. He was a true intellectual, and one of the most generous men I've ever met. He had a great comfort with himself. You could tell in the way he taught; you could tell in the way he carried himself; this wasn't a man who had to prove himself. This was a man who valued kindness. This was a man who valued sincerity. This was a man who valued the learning process. This was a quiet, learned scholar.
     Remmes was not quiet. “He had a curious, brilliant, restless mind,” his former student, Robert Schenck, recalled, “but he was also arrogant and egotistical.” He used these characteristics to reach generations of high school students in suburban Denver. Another former student of Remmes, Tristan Davies explained, “He was a force. You had to be clinically comatose” not to respond to his teaching methodology.
     All of Remmes’ former students remember his teaching methodology. Remmes used to stand on desks. He used to shout. He used to argue a point into obliteration. Remmes ranted against the politicians, against the military-industrial complex, against the sins of the Cold War, against the sins of the Church, against the establishment. Remmes did this, mind you, in conservative Colorado, with the military-industrial complex stretching from Rocky Flats to the Air Force, with churches taking up square blocks.
     Remmes’ teaching methodology had an ugly side. He used to embarrass students. He didn’t just single out unprepared students; he criticized point of view. He criticized intellect. He criticized voting habits. If you didn’t hold to the liberal tradition – and I mean the learned liberal tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Schlesinger and Galbraith – Remmes cut into you. I had Remmes when Reagan was president. I remember Remmes flipping the finger at the picture of Reagan hanging on the wall. Mind you, most of the parents of Remmes’ students voted for Ronald Reagan. Twice.
     There were cases when students erupted. There were cases when the unfair, bullying techniques of Remmes pushed students over the edge. Remmes himself used to tell a story. During one of his classes he humiliated a boy for not knowing where Afghanistan was. In the 1980s the Soviet Union had half a million soldiers in Afghanistan. America was aiding anti-Soviet forces. The American government saw Afghanistan as the Soviet’s Vietnam.
     And yet, the vast majority of Americans could not identify Afghanistan on a map. That was Remmes’ point for humiliating the boy. Ignorance is embarrassing. Allowing ignorance to fester is downright shameful.
     In class the boy erupted. He yelled, “Fuck you, Remmes!”
     Again, this was the 1980s. Nobody yelled f-you in public.
     When Remmes told this story, he went very quiet at this point. He answered the boy, in his retelling of the story, in a calm voice. Whether he actually reacted to the boy’s explosion in this manner is impossible to say. Again, Remmes built a mythology for himself. He embellished. The folklore of Remmes.
     In his retelling of the story, Remmes answered the boy, “If you’re going to address me in that way, you’ll say, ‘Fuck you, Mr. Remmes!’”
     The class laughed, according to Remmes. The boy was assuaged. In his retelling of the story, Remmes made himself out to be a skilled diplomat.
     I imagine that the boy, if Remmes story is true at all, didn’t feel assuaged. But I imagine that the boy went home and studied an atlas or an encyclopedia. I imagine that the boy grew up to be an expert in all things Afghanistan and speaks Pashto, as well as Dari and Barbari.
     That was the influence of Remmes.
     Unlike Remmes, David Savage was indeed a skilled diplomat. But instead of choosing a Foreign Services career, he chose academia. David was born in Kentucky in 1937. He earned an undergraduate degree from Denison University in Ohio. He won a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship to study at Princeton. Apropos that David should win that fellowship, for he resembled the former president. Both men were tall and lean. Both men were exceptionally learned. Both men were internationalists. On a grand scale, Woodrow Wilson tried to bring self-determination to the world. On a smaller scale, David championed overseas education and intercultural experiences. With his wife Carolyn, he led student groups to India and Germany. The Savage home in Portland became an international way station, with superb Indian food, entertaining conversation, and sometimes challenging discourse.
     Woodrow Wilson failed because he didn’t understand humility. David Savage succeeded because he did. Consider these words: “God, grant me humility. When my accomplishments are great and my spirits high give me wisdom which makes me know that my reward lies in silent exultation rather than in the applause of men. Again, when obstacles appear insurmountable, make me know that strength resides in a heart focused on Thee and not in the pity of others.”
     David offered these words as a meditation back in 1959. “David was very religious,” his wife Carolyn told me. “He said one time he was glad for his Christian training and he used it almost every day for references. Well, he was working in Christian missionaries, for God’s sake!” David specialized in the British Empire in India.
     Unlike David, Remmes rejected the church. “He grew up a Catholic,” Sam Butler, a colleague of Remmes and my former Spanish teacher, told me. “Based on comments he made, I think he was abandoned by his parents. I believe he grew up in a Catholic orphanage.”
     Butler continued, “Remmes was an angry man. It made sense that he would reject his early training. It made sense that he would offer himself as a self-made man. In many respects, he was.”
     Remmes was born in 1928 in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Creighton University in Omaha. He then fought in the Korean War. As I think about the boy who didn’t know where Afghanistan was and suffered the consequences, I imagine that Remmes didn’t know where Korea was. Americans typically discover foreign lands as a result of our military involvement. I imagine that Remmes railed against the general ignorance, and his own.
     After the war, he settled into a life of teaching. He arrived in suburban Denver in 1964. It’s interesting to me that Remmes didn’t seek out a teaching position in the liberal bastion of Denver. He chose the conservative suburbs. He chose the most elite school in the state at that time. Remmes wanted the fight.
     He retired in 1994. In those thirty years of teaching, he became an institution. But an institution with cracks. Remmes was an alcoholic, with long periods spent in recovery. Remmes didn’t know the first thing about humility. Psychologically, he filled the void in his life with students. He needed us more than we needed him. Of course we didn’t know that at the time. We idol-worshipped the man. A lunch date with Remmes was a treasured event for a student. We prided ourselves on accruing as many as possible.
     It’s interesting to me: We took on the Remmes personality. We bragged about our lunch dates with the icon. That was the influence of Remmes.
     Behind the scenes, there was torment. Sam Butler told me, “There was a hungry loneliness. I knew Remmes for forty years and yet I knew him only slightly better than his students. Remmes couldn’t let anybody into his life. He lived on the surface with people. He didn’t keep people at arm’s length. He kept them knocking on the door.”
     Butler continued, “There was no photo album in his house and no proverbial shoe box full of letters on a shelf in the closet. I don’t believe he had any relatives.”
     Sam Butler then offered a statement that spoke to the mystery of Remmes. “Remmes had a Catholic funeral and he wanted to be buried with veterans at Mount Olivet Cemetery. In the last six years of his life, he went back to the church 100 percent.”
     When I asked why, Sam Butler couldn’t offer a definitive explanation. He chalked it up to “the cycle of life. We usually end where he started.”
     Butler then told me a personally touching story. When my first book came out I sent copies to those who had influenced me along the way. David received a copy. Remmes received a copy. I never heard from either man.
     According to Sam Butler, who also received a copy, Remmes remarked that it was the kind of book he might have written. Sam Butler told me this over the phone. His words took my breath away. There are all sorts of reasons for writing. I write to connect to the world. According to Sam Butler, I hit my mark with Remmes.
     I had a similar moment with David Savage. The year was 1989. I took David’s senior seminar on British India. When it came time to write a thesis paper, I spent all-nighters in the library, all-nighters in front of the computer.
     I realize now that I worked hard because of David. Because I didn't want to fail him. Because he put his trust in his students to do thorough, vigorous research and I didn't want the disappointment of turning that trust into something sour.
     I received an “A.” I smiled at the grade on the paper and David smiled at my smile. In my remembrance the smiling lasted a few treasured moments.
     That was the last time I saw David. I don’t remember the last time I saw Remmes.
     The person I am today – a vigorous, questioning researcher; a student looking for the layers, the undulations; a writer who understands the thread – is a direct reflection of David and Remmes. Both men used far different means but teachers like David and Remmes taught the true meaning of life wrapped up in their choice of study. The true meaning of life has to do with compassion and humility and dignity and allowing each other to grow. David was a master at that. Remmes? Well, Remmes was Remmes. A man nobody forgets.

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The Way It Is