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Jan. 25th, 2010 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infryqToday is the funeral of Dr. Mike Moody, first dean of faculty and one of the first math professors at Olin College, where I did my undergraduate studies.
The class of 2006 was odd. There were 75 of us, and Olin was doing strange enough things with curriculum that they didn't pad the school with transfer-student upperclassmen, so our freshman year was insular. Everybody, students, staff, and faculty alike, were close.
I never took a class with Dr. M. He and his wife Joni lived in the big house just next to the school's driveway off the main road, and held cider-press parties every fall, which I never managed to go to. My senior year, when most of the class of 2006 had finally turned 21, Dr.M held a co-curricular in wine tasting, which I did not take. I did see him and Joni around the dining hall occasionally for supper, but the number of missed opportunities I had to connect with him I find uncanny and striking.
We had news last Tuesday that he wasn't doing so well, and I'd marked the email to remind myself to reply. By Thursday morning, it was too late. To say that grief and I have a passing acquaintance is something of an overstatement -- like anybody else, I've seen older blood relatives pass on, or the occasional high school classmate meet fate early, but it generally doesn't hit me more than a fallen face and, "Oh! That's such a shame," and on with life. Dr. Moody's passing took me out on Thursday. Possibly it was because of his nearness to Olin, which is an experience I cherish, but more likely it's because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'd hardly known him at all, except to know that he was exceptionally worth knowing.
So I'm sorry, Dr. M, for never taking the time to know you better. Olin was a remarkable place in allowing, encouraging, and accepting bonds of a common goal to form between any and all of its members, and I opted out of that one by failing to opt in. You were a major fixture of my undergrad experience, and nobody else gets to have that anymore. I don't have to hope that the people who are there for your funeral today will do you justice, because I know they will -- you collected good people around you. May it ever be.
RIP
The class of 2006 was odd. There were 75 of us, and Olin was doing strange enough things with curriculum that they didn't pad the school with transfer-student upperclassmen, so our freshman year was insular. Everybody, students, staff, and faculty alike, were close.
I never took a class with Dr. M. He and his wife Joni lived in the big house just next to the school's driveway off the main road, and held cider-press parties every fall, which I never managed to go to. My senior year, when most of the class of 2006 had finally turned 21, Dr.M held a co-curricular in wine tasting, which I did not take. I did see him and Joni around the dining hall occasionally for supper, but the number of missed opportunities I had to connect with him I find uncanny and striking.
We had news last Tuesday that he wasn't doing so well, and I'd marked the email to remind myself to reply. By Thursday morning, it was too late. To say that grief and I have a passing acquaintance is something of an overstatement -- like anybody else, I've seen older blood relatives pass on, or the occasional high school classmate meet fate early, but it generally doesn't hit me more than a fallen face and, "Oh! That's such a shame," and on with life. Dr. Moody's passing took me out on Thursday. Possibly it was because of his nearness to Olin, which is an experience I cherish, but more likely it's because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I'd hardly known him at all, except to know that he was exceptionally worth knowing.
So I'm sorry, Dr. M, for never taking the time to know you better. Olin was a remarkable place in allowing, encouraging, and accepting bonds of a common goal to form between any and all of its members, and I opted out of that one by failing to opt in. You were a major fixture of my undergrad experience, and nobody else gets to have that anymore. I don't have to hope that the people who are there for your funeral today will do you justice, because I know they will -- you collected good people around you. May it ever be.
RIP
