John could tell stories of living in New York City. He lived there as a child and as a college student. Among his friends were Liza Minelli (daughter of Judy Garland) and Artie Garfunkel (Simon and Garfunkel). “Liza was a lousy kisser” he claimed. John shared adventures that included shuffling up to Harlem to see the most famous jazz musicians in their prime including Miles Davis, Nina Simone, and John Coltrane. But he made sure you knew that vocal recordings by legendary trumpet player Chet Baker were unfit for the human ear. I was awestruck that John not only knew of the musicians I admired but had seen them on a near-weekly basis. He was, for me, a walking, talking encyclopedia of first-hand musical knowledge.
During his formative years, John’s family lived in Orlando.
John talked about delivering bootlegged liquor as a teenager. Running from the
authorities with a trunk load of bootlegged booze is the impetus for NASCAR. John’s
neighbor in Orlando was Frank Schiffman. Schiffman ran Harlem’s Apollo Theatre
from 1935 to the late 70s. The Apollo was the center of African American
culture during the Harlem Renaissance and there was John, in the proverbial
front row, of a cultural revolution.
John also shared that he attended college classes with Amitai
Etzioni who later became known as America’s foremost Communitarian theorist. Having
read, let alone knowing who Etzioni set the table for many a discussion with
John. I suppose what drew John and I together was our shared foundation of
knowledge and love for all things musical and political. We could nuisance a
single point of debate for hours and then, just as passionately, he would besmirch
the language of our industry by referring to it as ‘Educationese.’ “Why can
they just speak English?” he would ask and then laugh that laugh.
One summer John and I came to the office every day. Me,
because I didn’t know any better and John because he had nothing better to do.
Because he walked with a cane, John made a sort of clicking noise as he walked
down the hall. Whenever I heard that clicking, I knew he was coming down the
hall.
There were two courses that John took great pride in:
baseball and the Holocaust. Each was an extension of his personality: one made
him joyful while the other served as penitence. There were times when teaching
the Holocaust and then grading the papers, re-reading of the horrors of
genocide, wore him out. John regretted not having been more involved in the
Civil Rights marches in the 1960s. He felt he had shirked the blows that other’s
willing accepted: that he had no red badge of courage. On some level, teaching about
man’s inhumanity to man during the Holocaust seemed to be John’s way of making
up for sitting out, in his view, the important societal struggles of the 1960s.
While John could be mean and judgmental, he had buckets of character. He wanted
to be the guy that was known for punching up.
If there was one person on campus for whom John held his
highest level of disregard, it was Ed Rauchut. I never really knew Sandy until
I came to Bellevue University but my mom had been the preschool Sp-Ed teacher
for Ed’s special needs daughter, Evy. When Garrison Keillor (NPR’s Prairie Home
Companion) mentioned Ed’s course, ‘Rush (Limbaugh) is Right,’ I was equally
happy to be at arm’s length from Ed’s neocon politics…I mean his PhD was in
Shakespeare for Pete’s sake!
One day Ed stopped by my office. With cane in hand, John
walked across the hallway, stuck his head in my door and asked, in the crassest
way possible what Rauchut was doing in my office: totally ignoring Ed in the
process . Ed’s reply was equally unrepeatable but it baited John to come in. Their
mutual animosity was palatable until Ed mentioned his handicapped daughter Evy.
Later, after Ed had left, John wondered aloud how a man with
such awful politics could be such a caring father: he really admired Ed’s care
and concern for Evy.
While Ed and John could both be, to put it nicely, stinkers,
it wasn’t long before they were friends. Once Ed snuck into my office and called
John, who was in the office across the hall. He berated John, as was their
custom now, and challenged him in a race to my office (which Ed was already
in). John would hurriedly got up and rushed over only to find Ed laughing at
the somewhat sophomoric prank he’d pulled. Later, amid discussion, Ed surreptitiously
pull out his cellphone and dial John’s office phone. John got up, hobbled
across the hall to answer the phone. When he realized Ed’s prank, well, things got
salty. The madder John got, the harder we laughed: which only irritated John more.
And so it went. They really ended up
loving each other and it was fun to be a part of that.
Once it was the first class of a new semester. John was
teaching a history course down the hall. These rooms have two doors: one on the
right side and another on the left. Despite being our first class, I convinced
the new students that we needed to play a prank on John. Walking in a line,
without saying a word, we limboed in one door and out the other. At first John
was livid we’d interrupted his carefully prepared remarks but as his students
began laughing I could hear John: laughing that laugh.
When I first came to the University, faculty would gather
twice a year to approve the slate of graduates. It was a tradition that John
would research the grade point averages of each college by sharing which
percentage of students who had earned 4.0s. His dripping sarcasm made it feel as
though your Granddad was spanking you in public. The first time I attended, I
decided I did not like this man! It was later that I realized I had worked with
John’s wife Hele for years: with that came a special dispensation into John’s
world. Our first real interaction was watching a World Cup Soccer match online
in my office. “You actually like this? What! A sport? Is this a real sport?” he
asked. I did my best to teach him how to enjoy soccer and he reminded me, “That’s
fine but it’s a whole lot easier than hitting a round ball with a round bat” as
he argued for the purity of America’s past time.
Although smoking on campus was not allowed, John vaped in
his office.
“Can you smell it?”
Even though there was no smell, “I can smell it down the
hall” I said. With that, what was left of his eyebrows arched up with impish scheming.
Later, I noticed the door was closed completely and a coat was stuffed under
the door: clearly a practiced deception. For me, there was an element of sinful
joy tormenting him for his worst habits.
As an inside joke, John would affectional refer to me as his
Shabbat Goy. Due to his vast collection of aches, pains, and maladies, I would
help him navigate slippery snow and ice, and, the occasional obstruction. There was a time when I was struggling mightily
over an issue. It was under-my-skin and John could sense it. I’ll always
remember John placing his hand on my arm and resting his head next to mine: no
words but the kindness of the gesture defined our friendship.
For a while, John recorded a spoken word series of radio
shows referring to himself as The Old Curmudgeon. Each essay was a caustic,
biting rant against things he didn’t like, like cable news, overzealous happiness,
political and personal dishonesty, and willful thoughtlessness towards others. There’s John, forever punching up.
I love that guy; he was my mentor, he was my student, he was
my friend: and I miss him deeply.