Another Goodbye

Another Goodbye. My chancellor (to my mind the only Chancellor I knew and would care to know) died this past week. The notice to the University committee was delivered in this morning’s emails. As I age, I grow weary of the inevitable good byes to those who have traveled with me. Chuck had retired several years ago after having served the University of Wisconsin-Stout for twenty-six years. During his tenure the campus was transformed: no, that construction is too passive. Chuck’s vision transformed the University. Though he and I didn’t always agree on the meaning of a university education or of education in general, he always listened with interest and respect.Occasionally he agreed with me. I understood the work he undertook and that he accomplished at Stout: the University was forever changed during his tenure in a way that affected daily the lives of faculty and students and I suspect altered the lives of those who were fortunate to share the time with him. And I respected the work that he did and that he made possible for us.
     I don’t remember how we met or became friends. We once shared a somewhat short-lived book group; we both held long-standing subscriptions to The New York Review of Books and shared the articles and book recommendation. He complained to me that too often his edition din't arrive and we joked that the journal might not have believed that more than one subscription belonged to this town in rural Wisconsin. Chuck was trained as an historian (ah, he will have his place in Stout’s history); his dissertation we joked, studied some obscure condition in colonial Connecticut. We both had interest in the Puritans and in current politics. Chuck was a liberal in the best sense, and for too many years we mourned the directions our country moved under the course paved by incompetent and ignorant leaders. We read Tony Judt together, and mourned his death; later I sent Chuck a yet unread book (by both of us) by Charles Taylor. He didn’t read much fiction until later in his life, but he allowed me to grandly discourse on the novels and cultural critics I read. He once invited Ted Sorensen to the campus and to him introduced me as ‘the last Marxist on campus.’ I was honored.

     Every other month or so we would meet at a drinking establishment and share bottles of wines and wonderful conversation. Chuck knew good wine and he was generous in sharing it. He invited me often to his Holiday parties, and when I would enter he would pull me aside and whisper that I should inform the bartenders to pour from the bottle kept behind the public offering. The reserved bottle was from his wine cellar—a construction he stocked copiously and with great pride took me down to peruse and partake. We discussed always our work, our ideas and our lives. Chuck never took himself too seriously. Once over a bottle of wine he told me a story with which he identified. The story came from a chancellor at another University, one larger than Stout, who at a conference and over drinks told Chuck that sometimes he would stand at the windows of his office overlooking the campus and say to himself, “I wonder what the hell is going on out there!” Chuck loved that story, and I remarked to him that his office had large windows. It produced for both of us an ironic and satisfied laugh.
     One other thing we shared was heart disease. Chuck had bypass surgery a number of years ago and later had a pacemaker installed. His health declined, and the last time I saw him he walked with a cane. Then after he retired he moved with his wife, Toni to Florida, and we were reduced to sharing emails. In the telegraphic nature of these communications we shared our despair over the state of the nation. We worried for our children. Last week Chuck had a stroke and on Friday he died. And now I grieve alone and mourn his loss.