1/24/24

 Wednesday, January 24, 2024

In bed at 9, awake at 4:02, and up at 4:20.  33°, high of 37°, cloudy.  Dense Fog Advisory until 10 a.m. with patchy freezing fog in some locations.  Little wind blowing NE off the lake.  0.35 in. wintry mix in last 24 hours.  Sunrise at 7:15, sunset at 4:52, 9+37.

Treadmill; pain.  Woke up with the normal pains, including my right wrist which I realize isn't going to go away on its own, wondering about a wrist brace but waiting until my appointment with the VA PM&R clinic next week.  30:01 & 0.67 at 11 a.m. watching the beginning of a 2-hour documentary on OVID re ISIS members.  Plus 30:14 & 0.70 for a daily total of 60:15 & 1.37.

I'm grateful that I am not preparing a eulogy today, as I was one year ago for Tom.  The long days between Tom's sudden death, Caela's asking me to deliver his eulogy, and his funeral were hard ones, harder than I could have imagined.  Physically weak and in pain, beset with worries about the eulogy, experiencing dizziness and dry mouth from the amitriptyline prescribed for my CPP/IC, and sleepless nights.  My journal notes from 1/24/23:

Eulogy anxiety.  I've never been very good at public speaking.  Since Tom died 7 days ago, I've semi-dreaded being asked to do a eulogy.  One, it's of course painful to compose the eulogy, to try to wisely select among a thousand competing memories, to relive some of those memories, mostly good but some not so good.  How to compose a narrative that is honest and respectful, suitably somber, but at least somewhat human and humorous.  Not all that easy.  And when there is time, there are different drafts to try to improve an initial miserable one.  Second, there's the delivery aspect, actually speaking the narrative before the gathering for whom it is intended.  This is my biggest anxiety producer.  My voice has been weak for about 2 weeks, so weak that I've written my primary care doc wondering about esophageal cancer in light of my long term Barrett's Esophagus.  She had me stop taking the amitriptyline first to see if that helps and I think it has but my voice is still very much 'iffy.'  Then there's the problem os unpredictable IC/CPP pain and discomfort that usually or at least often has me not wanting to leave the house.  I've told Geri that I don't expect to attend the burial because I can't be out and about, away from facilities, that long.  Plus possible balance problems navigating the terrain.  I wish I were stronger, healthier, in better shape.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring and Fall . . . to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you / With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older / It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh / Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

 Now no matter, child, the name: / Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. / 

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed / What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.

 Tom's was the last eulogy I've delivered.  He also occasioned the first many years ago when he asked me to deliver the eulogy for JSJ's inamorato, whom I had met only once.  The memorial gathering was at Villa Terrace and I knew hardly any of those in attendance, including the deceased's parents.  It was a daunting challenge and I was duly daunted, but I managed to do it well enough that JSJ and the parents were pleased with my remarks.  I also eulogized my friend Roland Wright at St. Francis of Assisi Church and my friend and mentor Ray J. Aiken in the old courtroom at the law school.  I didn't save either of those eulogies, but I wish I had.  I remember saying of Roland how modest and self-effacing he was, how he would brush aside any praise that was directed his way, but that at his funeral gathering, he had to listen to the words of praise from those who loved him, including me.  Of Ray J., I remember remarking on the fact that the music at his funeral service was Precious Lord, with the lyrics "I am tired, I am weak, I am worn" and how hard it was for me to think of him as other than the strong, vigorous, often combative man that he was before age and Alzheimer's exacted their toll from him.  And I suppose the words I spoke in Kitty's living room at her house in Glendale at our family gathering after our Dad's death were a eulogy. We had a grieving circle and passed a 'speaking stone' around the circle.  We were a small group and   I don't recall what I said in addition to what a toll the World War and Iwo Jima took on him.  Now Kitty is gone too and I did not get to eulogize her in death although I did my best to sing her praises in life when I posted this on Facebook on her last birthday:

 

 On this date in 1944, in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, a beautiful and courageous and saintly 21 year old mother, who was one of God’s gifts to this world,  gave birth to a daughter who was destined to become an image of her mother, beautiful, courageous, and saintly, another of God’s gifts to the world.  When Mother Mary brought the precious daughter home to her little basement apartment, her waiting brother, about to turn 3 years old, is reported to have said “Take her back.  She doesn’t play.”  That was just the first of many mistakes that almost 3 year old brother would make in his life, but he learned soon enough that that new sister of his, would become over the course of 2 long lifetimes, his best friend, his confidante, his soul-sister as well as his biological sister.  He would come to love and admire her as she grew into a woman like their mother: beautiful in so many ways, courageous in so many ways, and saintly in so many ways.  As they grew older and older, with lifetimes of living behind them, the brother would share his belief in the saintliness of his sister with their father, who would chuckle because he sometimes saw her when she was impatient, or ‘bossy’ or angry at one thing or another, and the now-old brother would suggest to the even older father that he just didn’t know what real saints looked like.  The saintly sister herself would join in dismissing the idea that she was St. Kitty of Emerald Avenue and the brother would have to remind her and their father that real saints aren’t God and they are not angels - they are all human beings who get impatient, ‘bossy’, and even angry at times.  What makes them saints was described by Jesus in Chapter 25 of the Gospel of St. Matthew:  I was hungry and you gave me food.  I was thirsty and you gave me water.  I was sick and you cared for me.  I needed a home and you took you into your home.  So of course the brother, who had made many mistakes in his own life over many years, was not mistaken in describing his sister, who he loved so much, as a Saint.  Nor is he mistaken in thanking God for giving him the blessing of his  beautiful, courageous, and saintly sister, so very much like their dear mother.🙏❤️

 

I am thinking of Kitty today, and of our Mom and our Dad, and of Roland Wright, Ray J. Aiken, and Tom St. John.  They are all gone now but each of them was a blessing in my life, each in very different ways.  I am grateful for and grateful to each of them.

I gave another eulogy of sorts but not at a funeral or memorial service but rather as an introductory speech on February 11, 1997,  to the first of a series of lectures at Marquette Law School.

 "UNCLE BOB": INTRODUCTORY REMARKS TO THE INAUGURAL ROBERT F. BODEN LECTURE

CHARLES D. CLAUSEN

I felt honored last week when Dean Howard Eisenberg asked me to reminisce for a few minutes this afternoon about the man for whom this lecture series is named, Robert F. Boden. I was honored to be an opener for Professor Daniel Mandelker's main event, and to play a supporting role in this inaugural Boden Lecture. Secondly, and more personally, I was honored to be asked to share some thoughts about a man who was so important to Marquette University Law School and to me personally. So when Howard asked, I immediately said "yes."

    Saying "yes" was the easy part. As this date and event approached, I had to deal with the problem of what to say about this remarkable man who led the law school for more than seventeen years. To me and to a decreasing handful of veteran faculty members at the Law School, Bob Boden was a flesh and bones friend, co-worker, teacher, and leader. To those who came to the law school after 1984, when he died at age 55, he is the discarnate former dean after whom the Boden Courtroom, the Boden Chair, and now the Boden Lectures are named.

    I have chosen not to speak about the accomplishments of Dean Boden mentioned in the printed invitation to this inaugural lecture: the growth in the size of the law school faculty and administration under his leadership, the expansion of the physical plant,, the growth in the law library's collection, his many writings on law, the legal profession and legal ethics.'  As impressive and significant as his accomplishments were in terms of bricks and mortar, the faculty size and strength, volumes in the library, 

 and in terms of his own scholarly and always elegant writings, I do not believe that those achievements explain why we are here this afternoon, thirteen years after his death, honoring his memory.  It was rather, I think, attributes of his heart and soul-his character- that cause us who knew him and worked with him at the law school to hold the memory of him so dear and to recall him this afternoon.

    Bob Boden was a born teacher. Regardless of the role he was in -  professor, dean, writer, law reformer, advocate, counselor, Bob was a teacher.  So, I devote these few minutes to speaking about what Bob Boden taught his students and his faculty not about Law, but about Life-what he taught us, not by lecture, article, or book, but by living example.

    Bob Boden taught us compassion and generosity and service to others, and he taught gently and by example. He taught us pride in our profession, and he taught gently and by example. He taught us, gently and by example, about humility and the value of a sense of humor. And he taught us, always gently and always by example, that these virtues can be united and can co-exist in a person with power and prestige and high status, even in a lawyer, even in a law professor, even in a university dean.

    Dean Boden had three nicknames. All of them were affectionate, two of them were humorous and one was the most revealing. He was called "Dean Bodeen," a simple rhyming play on his name and title. He was called "Dean the Dream," after the Marquette basketball star Dean Meminger. And he was called "Uncle Bob." Uncle Bob. What a wonderful nickname. It suggested family, affection, approachability, and a caring relationship. It was a perfect nickname for Bob Boden.

    When law students had serious troubles with grades, or finances, or with other personal problems, they usually ended up in the Dean's office, not always seeking but always receiving help. Sometimes the help was money, sometimes from his own pocket. Sometimes the help was becoming one of the legion of Dean Boden's last-semester- of-law-school research assistants who needed a couple of credits with a high grade in order to graduate with their classmates. Always the help included patient listening, caring, and compassionate counseling. He was the same way with faculty members, who were experiencing hard times: death of loved ones, serious illnesses, divorce, all the various kinds of heartaches that Life brings to people over many years. We will never know how many people over his seventeen years as Dean sat in his office needing help of some kind and getting it. He would not talk about it; he was a great respecter of confidences. We know about it from the people he helped. I hear such stories to this day, talking to alumni. Uncle Bob.

    Bob taught us pride in our chosen profession. He was an academic through and through, but he was a lawyer first and last. He described the law school as the teaching arm of the legal profession and he saw professional education as different in kind from other university education. He liked lawyers and lawyers liked him. He believed in lawyers as trustworthy counselors, social facilitators, protectors of human dignity, and justice seekers and peacemakers. To the extent that lawyers were like that, they were like him, a good lawyer and a good person. If they were not, he would tell you they betrayed a public trust.

    When a young faculty member named Janine Geske (now Justice Geske), came to him in 1979 and said she wanted to open a law clinic for elderly citizens in the downtown area, sponsored by the law school and the Roman Catholic Church's Gesu parish, he supported her strongly, despite some vocal opposition in different quarters. For years, that clinic provided help to our neighbors, many of whom had nowhere else to turn, while at the same time providing professional education to our students that could not be replicated in the classroom. He believed that what our faculty and students did in that clinic represented the legal profession at its best, not simply as a learned profession but as a helping profession.

    He had no use for lawyer jokes, or for lawyers whose behavior would give rise to lawyer jokes. He was a dignified, high-minded, and public-spirited attorney at law, as well as a professor of law and dean.

On the other hand, he taught us by his example about humility and being able to laugh at yourself. As proud as he was to be a lawyer, a professor, a dean, an Irishman, a Catholic, a part of the Marquette family, he was personally humble. He referred to himself as "Uncle Bob." He poked fun at himself. When I first came to the law school thirty years ago, the school had its own full-time maintenance and custodial worker, called in those politically less sensitive days a janitor. At the law school, we enjoyed the services of a janitor named Ed, who was referred to as Ed the Janitor. Ed looked surprisingly like Dean Boden: same height, same build, similar facial features, even a similar distinctive manner of walking. The Dean delighted in the rumor that he and Ed the Janitor were brothers, and that Ed got him the job as dean. He delighted even more in relating the rumor that every year they switched jobs. (Of course, there were some times when he would have loved to have switched jobs with Ed, at least for a while.) He taught us not to take ourselves, regardless of title or position, too seriously.

    In The Education of Henry Adams, Adams wrote: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.'  Thirteen years post-mortem is hardly an eternity, but it is a nice start. And, after all,

this is only the InauguralBoden Lecture. Adams also wrote: "A friend in power is a friend lost." Bob Boden's life proved that, at least for those with capacious souls, power and real friendship can co-exist.

That is my thumbnail sketch and reminiscence about Robert F. Boden. To know him was to like him, and thousands did. To know him well was to love him. I do not know how many loved him and miss him to this day. There are a great many. I am blessed to be one of them.