Last night my sister called me from back home with very sad news: my favorite undergraduate professor passed away yesterday. And just like that I have lost one of the most important influences in my life. He inspired me to become a literature professor. ("What? A life of talking about books with people? I can get
paid for that?") He was one of the surrogate father figures to whom I turned when I lost my father suddenly at age eighteen. Professor J.D. was a model for me in so many ways, ranging from the profound to the superficial. I admired his self-deprecating wit in the classroom. I marvelled at his productivity (he was an internationally admired scholar of American literature; he was a prolific poet; he was a music critic too). I was helplessly flattered when he assigned me an A+ in a creative writing workshop and told me that he hoped it went to my head. I loved our lunches together, when we'd meet over beer and sandwiches at one of the campus pubs, and talk throughout the afternoon about novels and music and sports... Even the way I dress is, in part, indebted to him, such a fan was I of his L.L. Bean sweaters and tweed jackets and pressed khakis.
Last year, when my first academic book was in the proofs stage, I remembered (thankfully) at the last minute to include J.D.'s name in the acknowledgments. He'd long since been a first-hand influence on my scholarly work, but I wanted to register in some public way the long shadow he cast over all that I do professionally. It will long be one of my deepest regrets that I didn't send him a copy of those acknowledgments when the book was published, so he could see while he was alive how I held him in such high regard.
I pray that on some level he knew.
And I'll say now, that if I can ever touch a student even half as much as J.D. touched me in this lifetime, then this career will have been a successful one.
I will miss you, John.
