I had never heard that before and honestly I can’t say as I have heard it but maybe once since his class and I believe that was on the television.
Had you crossed paths with the Professor you very well may have mistaken him for a homeless man until you spoke to him.
He wore what we used to call earth shoes brown and well worn. Tube socks, the type with the two colored rings around the top which you could see because he also wore his pants as if he were expecting a flood. “High waters” we called them in high school.
The pants themselves were a work of art usually the golf type solid for the most part with a very light plaid pattern and he always topped his ensemble off with a black concert t-shirt although I couldn’t tell you one single band that was represented perhaps because his shirts were as worn as the rest of his wardrobe.
He had a full head of white hair which as my mother would say looked like he combed “with an egg beater” and a full mustache and beard that hung down almost to his expansive abdomen.
Then there were his eyes. A placid blue with other bits of colors intertwined and I was sure if I looked closely enough I would see movement like two tiny universes spinning on thier axis.
I’ve not learned so much in one class in my life nor do I believe I will again. The professor had a way about him that made the young fresh out of high school teens pay attention and participate and the older students like myself revel in his brilliance as an educator.
The professor taught entry level chemistry and as with any entry level class if you do not lay the proper foundation the preceding classes are a struggle. It seems that it was the Professor’s mission in life to send every one of his students away from his class with a basic knowledge of chemistry that they would retain for the rest of their lives.
So why “one fell swoop” you ask? The Professor was from the hills of West Virginia and it seems that he learned certain expressions that we weren’t accustomed to hearing in our area and that he would purposely keep them in his vocabulary to keep our attention and it worked quite well.
He had a pleasant manor, an even temperament and if a student truly needed help he wouldn’t give up until that student throughly understood.
One of my favorite parts of his class was when he would be lecturing and would need to refer to the periodic table and would instruct us to “go to the periodic table in your home, where ever you may keep it”. We all knew it was coming and we all laughed anyway.
There were a few times when for whatever reason I had to ask the Professor a question when he was away from his class. I remember the first time I called his office I was nervous speaking to him and was glad when the answering machine picked up and I could leave a message. True to form though the Professor didn’t have a typical message on his answering machine but one that would take you or I some thought to concoct but was second nature for the Professor.
It has been many years but I will do my best, it went something like this…
”Greetings, you have reached the office of the Professor and I fear you have caught me away from my telephone. If it is the noon hour I can most probably be found in the university’s cafeteria indulging in gluttony. In any case, I deeply regret missing your call and if you would kindly leave the necessary information for me to contact you upon my return barring any cosmic influences or interference imposed on me by the laws of physics, I shall do so in a timely manner."
I was speechless.... I couldn’t do anything but hang the phone up.
Luckily it was before the days of caller ID and once I made it to his office I found he had a rotary phone anyway. I did redial and leave my message and his greeting left a smile on my face that lasted through the day.
My sixteen year old daughter had chemistry homework the other night and I had no problems helping her. She wasn’t even born when I took the Professor’s class and I felt the need to tell her about what a wonderful man and educator he was.
I told her as I have told you all his physical description and the sense that there was some extreme intelligence nestled in that fuzzy white head and about the periodic chart hanging in the house and I felt myself smiling.
“Where is the phone book?” I asked my husband “I saw the new ones came today”.
I looked up his name in the university directory fearing the worst because he wasn’t young then and that was almost twenty years ago. Much to my delight he was listed so with butterflies in my stomach, hoping he was away from his office I dialed his number
“Greetings, you have reached the office of the Professor………”