Semi-retirement

“This thou perceives, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

    William Shakespeare, seventy-third sonnet

 

In “Stoner” John Williams on page 45 wrote that superannuated Arts and Sciences dean Josiah Claremont decided in 1920 to hold a reception for soldiers returning to University of Missouri:

   Claremont was a small bearded man of advanced ae, several years beyond the point of compulsory retirement; he had been with the University ever since its transition in the 1870s from a normal college to a full University, and his father had been one of its early presidents.  He was so firmly entrenched and so much a part of the history of the University that no one had quite the courage to insist upon his retirement, despite the increasing incompetence with which he managed his office.  His memory was nearly gone; sometimes he became lost in the corridors of Jesse Hall, where his office was located, and had to be led like a child to his desk.

 

Michael Tollin, responsible for the 10-part “Last Dance” documentary, is working on one about my favorite sports star, Richie (Dick) Allen.  Though 12 years my junior, Tollin, like me, agonized over the 1964 Phillies year end slump but cheered on the National League’s rookie of the year Richie Allen.  In the ensuing years, however, many fans turned on Allen as the team’s overall talent diminished.  Allen had endured racist taunts while playing in Birmingham with the Triple-A Arkansas Travelers but nothing so mean-spirited as the taunts coming from his home stadium.  He took to wearing a helmet while playing first base and occasionally wrote “TRADE ME” in the dirt with his spike.

 

My second chance to root for my hero came when Dick Allen joined the Chicago White Sox in 1972.  Sitting in a fifth-row leftfield seat, I witnessed a line drive off Allen’s bat that was actually climbing when it landed just above me and ricocheted another 50 feet.  His MVP year probably saved the White Sox franchise from moving to Florida. Later in the decade, I got yet a third opportunity to root for Allen as, unbelievably, he returned to the Phillies at the urging of veterans Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, and Tony Taylor.  All three seasons beginning in 1977 Philadelphia made the playoffs and only a grossly incompetent manager prevented a World Series appearance.  Replaced by Pete Rose, Allen ended his career in Oakland.  When he announced his intention to retire, I called White Sox owner Bill Veeck to suggest he offer him a chance to return to Chicago.  I got right through to Veeck, who said he’d done that very thing and that Allen appreciated the gesture but preferred to retire to his Pennsylvania horse ranch.  Last year Allen fell one vote shy of entering Cooperstown, baseball’s Hall of Fame.  Let’s hope 2020 is the year.

At age 65 I retired as professor of History at IU Northwest.  The benefits were too generous to turn down, and my stepping down allowed the university to hire a more-than-competent replacement, Nicole Anslover, whose classes I frequently attend as a guest lecturer.  I never actually stopped going in to my office at the Calumet Regional Archives, where I remained an unpaid co-director.  Often receiving are-you-still-here stares, I gradually settled into what amounted to semi-retirement, remaining useful to archivist Steve McShane and staying active as editor of Steel Shavings magazine.  Now that Steve is retiring and the campus remains closed, I have adjusted to writing my blog from home and not missed my pre-pandemic routine as much as I thought.

On the other hand, I’d lose much of my purpose in life if I severed ties with IUN.  On the short term I need to help secure a replacement for Archivist Steve McShane by establishing a relationship with the incoming chancellor and present him with Paul Kern and my history of the university. In fact, it’s in need of an update and if I’m not up to it, at least I can continue to do oral histories to that end.  I enjoy interacting with History colleagues and attending their classes once in a while. Face it, I’m a lifer reader to volunteer wherever I might be needed.

Several former colleagues my age or even older are still teaching, reluctant to give up the soapbox that goes with their position.  Alan Barr recently retired at age 80; he claimed to have asked his English colleague George Bodmer to let him know when it was time for him to stop teaching; they’d ride to the university together from Illinois.  When Bodmer announced his intention to resign, Barr left a semester ahead of him.  While I considered myself an excellent teacher and adjusted my approach to elicit more class participation as students’ diminished attention span seemed to require it, I never became as skilled at it as the generation that replaced my cohort of lecture-oriented professors.  All in all, I don’t regret retiring from full-time duties in the classroom but would regret not being involved in university activities.  My mentors in that regard are “lifers” Ruth Nelson, who after resigning as Bookstore manager, continued as a library volunteer until well into her nineties, and Garrett Cope, who was still doing valuable work in Continuing Education in his mid-80s.

Anne Koehler, who remains a valuable library staff member and shows no sign of slowing down, wrote:

    My parents came over from Germany to visit in 1973. On the way back to the plane in New York City we stopped in Asbury Park, New Jersey. We swam in the ocean, my dad got knocked down by a wave. My husband and I got a hot dog from a nearby vender on the boardwalk. A little later, my father went to do the same. He came back with a sour mien. I asked him what was the matter. He told me that they asked him whether he wanted sauerkraut on the hot dog. He took this as an insult, knowing that Germans were sometimes called Krauts in America. I assured him that it was the normal way hot dogs were being served there. We had a good laugh.

With a German-American friend I used the phrase jerry-built, meaning poorly constructed or thrown together and she told me the phrase was an insult to Germans, sometimes referred to as Jerrys during World War II.  I was surprised to hear that and so I looked up its derivation and discovered that jerry-built came into usage in England during the mid-nineteenth century from the nautical term jury, meaning something temporary or makeshift and built with inferior materials.  Anne went on:   

 In 1977 my father came to visit, mainly to see his half year old only granddaughter Linda. He would take her out in her stroller and observe and photograph local wildlife. There were groundhogs in the bushes. His big desire was to see the Grand Canyon, with or without us. We rented a motor home and took off. Linda got sick and we had to take her to the ER in Springfield, Missouri. They told us not to give her any food or liquid for 24 hours. She got well soon.--Arriving at the Grand Canyon we stood at the rim gazing down into the huge chasm. My father said: "Where is the Colorado River?" We said: "That little blue band down there at the bottom." He refused to believe it at first, saying he had seen videos showing it as a raging river and that could not possibly be it. After pointing out, that we were a mile away from it he finally accepted the fact. I dearly miss my parents and treasure the time with them.

I enjoyed two movies about seniors.  The first, “Being Rose” (2017) starred Cybil Shepherd, whom I remembered as a teenager in “The Last Picture Show” and Bruce Willis’s love interest in the Eighties “Moonlighting” series.  With just months to live and wheelchair bound, she takes off on a trip, meets an irresistible cowboy played by James Brolin and befriends free-spirited Lilly, played (who would have guessed?) by Pam Grier, Foxy Brown in blaxploitation flicks. 

Based on the true story of Melita Norwood, “Red Joan” (2018) featured Judy Dench as an 80-something retired physicist suddenly accused of passing atomic secret to the Russians during World War II.  Flashbacks show Joan as a brilliant, idealistic Cambridge University student who became attracted to two communists who eventually recruit her after she witnesses film of the devastation caused bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  She believed that the best way to avoid another world war was for both Cold war adversaries to have such weapons of mass destruction.

Dench as "Red Joan"