In Memoriam

The first time I met Dr. Price I was wedged into one of a dozen collapsed desks crammed into temporary storage under one of the side stairwells of Calderwood Hall, my hands blocking out the glaring fluorescence while Eric pressed his long fingers into my temples.  I wouldn’t receive a migraine diagnosis for another six or seven years, but even then I was prone to headaches, and one had clamped down on my skull halfway through Brit Lit.  Eric, one of the few people with whom I felt physically at ease, had directed me to the broken desk, out of the flow of between-class foot traffic, and told me to sit down while he worked on the pressure points in my skull.  I obliged, in no mental shape to notice the stairwell’s location opposite Dr. Price’s office door.

It came to my attention, however, when an intense, strained voice materialized next to my right shoulder with an abrupt “Is something wrong?” I jumped and shifted my hand away from my eye to see a face, comically upside-down, peering into mine.

Oh shit.  I knew Dr. Price by appearance and reputation, having been regaled with horror stories from my first day of classes by older students. He’s the meanest professor in the department, they told us, as if we sat around a campfire listening to the insidious exploits of bloodthirsty ghosts.  He NEVER gives As.  He hates everyone.  He hates teaching.  He had a nervous breakdown last year.  He yells at students.

I yanked my hands away from my face.  “Omigosh! Dr. Price! Are we bothering you?”

He blinked, a small man with a military-style crew cut and a sparse mustache, looking, in the rapids of moving students jostling each other to get around him, both slight and confused. 

“Why would you be bothering me?” he said.  “You’re not making any noise.”

“Oh…” My voice trailed off, confused, unsure whether he disapproved of the physical contact between a boy and a girl at a strictly conservative religious school, but not quite direct enough to ask. 

He straightened up and stood there awkwardly blinking again before venturing, “Are you all right?”

“Oh! I’m fine--it’s just a little headache--we can go away if we’re bothering you--”

“Do you want some Ibuprofen?” His voice cut mine off.

I blinked.  “Oh---no, that’s okay---”

“I have some in my office,” he said.

“Oh--sure--thanks!” I managed, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. 

He whipped around and scurried into his office, then returned with a bottle of Ibuprofen the size of my head.  He brought an aura of intensity with him that seemed to buzz in the air around him.

“How many do you want? Ten? Twelve?”

“Um--two?”

His face fell.  “Just two?”

I watched his face and saw the disappointment there, and said, “Well, maybe a few more for the road, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind!”  Excitedly he twisted off the cap while I extended my hand, and then poured a slot machine of pills into my cupped palm until I had to catch the overflow in my other hand. 

“Thanks, Dr. Price!” I said.

He beamed.  “Do you need anything to carry them in?”

“Oh no, I’ll just put them in my pocket,” I said, standing up.  Eric, silent through the whole exchange, stood at my shoulder, his eyes assessing.  “Thanks again, Dr. Price.”

“Sure, if you need any more, just stop by my office,” he said, and then went back inside and closed his door while I turned to look at Eric with raised eyebrows.

“I thought he was mean,” I whispered.

Throughout my tenure at Grove City I only had one of Dr. Price’s classes, Civ Lit, one of the core humanities classes required of every major.  The stories of his ogreish reputation swirled unabated, and I saw the abrupt manner and harsh writing commentaries that gave birth to them as I sat in the front row of Civ Lit; I also saw how his hands shook whenever he held a paper between them, and heard the deep anxiety that tightened his voice, and listened to my other professors speak in tones of respect about his research in classical literature, and remembered, from our first encounter, his awkward, shy eagerness to alleviate someone else’s pain.  I saw, in his red-pen slashes through his students’ attempts at essays, a profound love for writing.  When our term paper was assigned, I poured all my effort into it, going so far as to begin writing it weeks in advance rather than the night before the due date, and brought several drafts for him for review, at which he almost literally lit up in delight, and insisted that I sit while he went through it on the spot so we could discuss.  He liked my writing, offered excellent suggestions with unusual warmth, and, when he handed back the graded results in class, proudly delivered mine into my hands with the semester’s only “A” scrawled boldly across the top.  “You earned it,” he said.

I wanted the A.  But I also took my writing process to him as a gift.  And I made sure, when the campfire stories about his cruelty and craziness circulated, to append them with my own experiences and observations of him, concluding simply, “He’s nice.”

In my senior year, when I defended my undergraduate thesis, he sat on the panel of professors who judged it.  I had undertaken an intensive criticism of C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces using the psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva (all of which I look back on and laugh as total horseshit, but it was a fun exercise); Dr. Brown demanded to know why I hadn’t used a Christian interpretive lens, which sparked an intradepartmental war right in front of me, with the Drs. Dixon and Dr. Potter and Dr. Stansberry leaping into the fray in my defense and Dr. Brown throwing barbs at me and then drowning under their indignation, so that I barely needed to say a word to earn my honors.  Throughout the farcical ordeal, Dr. Price sat quietly in the back corner, having obviously not read my thesis but unwilling to participate in any criticism. I loved all of my professors (except Dr. Brown) in that moment.

Following graduation, I moved out to South Bend, but for a few years returned annually to Grove City’s Homecoming.  At one departmental breakfast, after catching up with classmates and the Dixons and Dr. Potter, I made my way across the central lobby of the English suite to say hi to Dr. Price. 

“How’s your writing?” he asked.  “What are you working on?” 

I told him about my biggest project - a retelling of the life of Clytemnestra, using an experimental narrative format - waxing enthusiastic about all the details of her life (ones that Aeschylus left out) that I had discovered in my research into mythology.  He joined in with some details of his own, his face taking on the rare joy of a scholar speaking about his subject with someone who could follow it.  I described the narrative structure, and where I wanted to go with the story.  He listened intently, nodding.

“This has legs,” he said.  “You need to write this.  This can go somewhere.  It has legs.”

I think it was the last time I spoke with him.  A year or so later I returned to Grove City to sit in the chapel with a handful of other students for his memorial service.  “There was an accident,” the classmate who called to tell us about it had said.  “He went off the road in the dark and hit a tree.”  I thought about his shaking hands, remembered John’s story about the time Dr. Price suddenly stopped teaching his Advanced Writing class and sat under the table, and wondered.  His ten-year-old son, whom he had spoken of rarely but with affection, stood next to his mother looking stunned.

This morning, anticipating a full day of heinous menstrual cramps, I checked my supply of Ibuprofen in my purse and saw that it was running low.  As I reached into my bedside drawer for the industrial-sized bottle I keep there, twisted off the top, and poured a jackpot of pills into my palm, I found myself thinking of Dr. Price, and the intensity of unaccustomed kindness on his face as he gripped the bottle tightly to keep it steady and poured pain reliever into my hands.

I’m still working on the magnum opus I discussed with him all those years ago - have finally brought it back to light and begun to write it again.  When I finish it, in 20 or 30 years, I don’t expect anyone to read it or want to publish it.  It will be difficult and challenging.  It won’t sell.

I’m dedicating it to Dr. Price anyway.