Impact of an ugly name
My favorite student -- and one whose life I had hoped to save at the expense of his conscience -- was John of the one-time ugly name. It wasn't actually "Backhouse" (meaning in Dixiesprache: "outdoor wooden toilet house, infested with yellow jackets and flies and with black-widow spiders and centipedes lurking under the excrement encrusted cutout seats, and sometimes a copperhead lurking ..." Have you ever been struck my the marvelous economy of these Southerners?) but it was morphologically and etymologically similar.
The Backhouses (by origin like as I Frisian) to protect themselves from ridicule and from the associated stench, gradually reshaped their name in Bacchus (with the connotation of a revered Roman god of wine and merriment and offbeat scholarship.) Altogether more pleasant, and the Bacchuses, now acceptable to all, became renowned and beloved throughout the countryside.
John's elder brother had attended the University, and suffered the indefeasible contumely aroused by his name. Annoyed, angry, unable to defend himself, he demanded of John and their parents that the spelling of the family name be changed, although the pronunciation would not be modified from the original (again in good Frise). They consented. The elder brother, already wounded, refused to change his own name. There are some men who will not run fire, or give their enemies the satisfaction of knowing how deeply they have been wounded. I killed a large snapping turtle on my farm who had bitten Graf, my over-curious and excessively bold GSH pup. I shot the turtle (with a .22 pistol) a dozen times and reloaded. He would not release my dog who had attacked him, but, clawed his 10 kilos after the retreating and squealing 25 kilo pup. I could see that the turtle was dying posteriorly, his rear legs dragging. I could see his glittering eyes dim. But he would not let Graf loose. I had to scissor his jaws apart with two star drills. Even after that, he was an ungodly long time dying.
John went up to the University in the late 60's. A brilliant, charmed youth, a scholar, an orator, an organizer of great power he was by the spirit of the times thrust into the fire of the Vietnam struggle. He was the leader of the pacifists and war resistors. With his bold but somewhat tragic manner, he stimulated the students to resist (they firebombed my laboratory). He confronted the faculty in their Senate and in a brilliant and futile speech, besought them to study war no more. I sat stunned with admiration for his brilliance, commitment and courage. The achieve of, the mastery of the thing! That spring the State Police cama and went and returned. The violent students, fired by those I suspect today were actually foreign agents. The much despised national guard appeared on campus, in their barbed-wire snooded Jeeps. Massed battalions, in columnar formations, swept down Green Street,which divided Engineering from Campus Center pushing disorderly mobs of students before them while firecrackers and Molotov cocktails were flung from windows. The students were pushed onto the quad, and teargassed and dispersed. State Police and fire teams of NG rounded up stragglers. Meanwhile, John (now President of the Associated Students), a few others -- a few professors -- met in angry parle with the representatives of the authorities who we were convinced were preparing a massacre (it was the days of Kent State). The commander of state police who had that spring moved from campus to campus literally putting out fires explained to us that his officers were tired, sleepless, infuriated at their student antagonists -- on hair trigger, and ready to explode. The angry mobs were not to be controlled by John or the chancellor (the governor had called out the troops despite the Chancellor's refusal to request them.)
In the midst of these disorders, John and I were meeting regularly. I urged him (unneeded) to struggle to keep the peace and avoid the massacre we all expected. And worst of all, John had been called for his pre-induction physical. (much of the student disorder is attributable to the fact that the Nixon government (to which I was a marginal adviser) was inducting college students who had previously been deferred -- many of our current congressmen skulked their way into schools of divinity to avoid being called to fight for the nation they now beat their breasts about.)
John had made up his mind to refuse induction to an unjust war -- which meant imprisonment. He refused to claim a conscientious objection because he thought it cowardly to blench, and he knew there were some wars he would fight.
He was distraught -- almost mad with the pressures we was under. I knew if he defied induction and were imprisoned, our campus would be torn apart in revolt and that many hundreds would be killed and many thousands would have their lives and careers destroyed. I was ruthless in destroying his self-centered illusions and pled his responsibility for others who had chosen him as their leader. He must not resign himself to prison and loose an aimless, desperate, and fatal, revolt.
The worst thing I did (and I struggle today to decide if even sacred ends can ever justify evil means) was to instill in him a cruel and selfish fear and cowardice, something I despise above anything in myself or others. I had a few years earlier (I had thought) had done with a crisis in my own life that had required (I had thought) risking my life and conscience to save others whom I despised. I had funked it, and consequently hated myself.
{sorry I have to stop here ... maybe some other time.) |
