Where Are They Now? Gene Laskowski, Sacred Studies Faculty 1971–79

For the past two years, at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago, I have presented to clinicians a  seminar on using creative non-fiction to address and contain experiences of trauma. I've also served for the past six years (since retiring from the English Department at the University of Michigan) on the Jung Institute's Program Committee. I read and write every morning, and both a short story and poem are set for publication next year. I also participate in a "Deepening the Life of the Soul" group (begun by Groton alum James Boyd White '56) and in a Depth Psychology reading group.

 

I met Jeri Sawall at the University of Michigan's English Department Xerox machine on the day before classes began, fall term, 1993. Jeri was a Comp Lit PhD student, a Javits Fellow, taking a year off from her fellowship to see about teaching. I made some joking crack and got a smile. Now, twenty-five years later, I'm still making comic verbal jousts and she is still smiling. We spend winters in a refurbished cottage built by Portuguese whalers along the Pacific in Carmel, California.

 

 

It's hard to choose one aspect, one lesson. Groton was my first teaching position; I had never been in a private school before, never taught before, never run a dormitory before. When I arrived at the door for the opening faculty dinner, a long-time member of the Groton community asked me how I stood on apostolic succession, not a topic that I had pondered much. I point to these radical changes in my life to suggest that Groton was a place that offered the time and support to learn and to grow.

Paul Wright believed in my capacity to develop as a teacher; Dick Eckart's enormous kindness helped me to laugh at my fears and mistakes; Peter and Pat Camp came over when I felt lost in doubt; Hugh Sackett’s gentle tact and wisdom delivered over many walks offered a steadying perspective. And when Todd Jesdale arrived at the classroom next to mine, I listened to him teach through the fire door between our classrooms, and my teaching grew from his mastery. I suppose I share this idea of learning and growing at Groton with many of the students who could not in their youth understand that teachers too are still and always learning and growing.

So here's a brief story about what stands out. Some of you may recall the winter of 1976–77.  At the end of the fall term, after the students had left and we had turned in our comments on each of our students, Bob Parker, Todd Jesdale, and I went out into the Groton woods and cut down a tree, and sawed it into sections to be chopped into firewood for our faculty homes. There is a relief at the end of term, albeit relief nestled in the gray, raw chill of winter. We hauled the trunk sections back to our homes. I got my share and was reminded to chop the wood before it dried. But then of course I was leaving the next morning for San Francisco. My sections remained where we had left them.  

I arrived back from San Francisco in a blizzard. The cab out from Logan took nearly two hours in the storm, and it left me off where Joy Lane intersects with [Farmers Row]. I walked back to the Richards House, a far piece in the unplowed snow, hard going with my suitcase. When I turned the corner to my back door, tired now and sweaty for the effort, I saw that all my share of the wood was there, chopped and neatly stacked. I've saved one of the pieces; it's with me here in my study even after forty years have passed. Who could not learn, who could not grow through contact with such mentors?

 

So here's the point: when you spot integrity, hold on to it and learn from it.

 

This is less funny than it is just plain fun. I'm thinking now of the last two years of my tenure at Groton. I had all the Third Form boys, thirty-two of them, in my old-style-cubicle, Brooks House dorm. By then, at least a few lessons about running a dorm had gotten through. One of those lessons was that these boys were younger than they thought and that they needed reassurance. Another lesson was that we had to laugh freely and fully and that the sooner we laughed, the better. This second lesson brings me to an odd book on the shelves here at my study desk—a collection of tongue twisters entitled A Twister of Twists, A Tangler of Tongues. So at the very end of our first dorm meeting I offered reassurance, reminding the boys there was a good chance that sitting in this room were people who would become lifelong best friends, and this would include someone present right then whom they as yet did not know but who would be their best man their at their wedding. Having offered this bit of reassurance, I moved on to the need for laughter and announced that that coming Friday we would have the annual Banana Split Bonanza. The Prefects and I offered no more explanation, leaving the Bonanza shrouded in mystery. It entailed timed trials of saying a tongue twister three times in rapid succession. If at any point you made a mistake, you had to start your three times again. One prefect with a stopwatch kept the time, another stood by with a whistle to signal a mistake. For some reason, we had each boy stand on a chair for his trial. The tongue twister was a classic: "Miss Smith dismisseth us." You try saying it rapidly, three times in a row. The winner was the one with the shortest time for thrice-repeated perfect elocution. There was much laughter as we stumbled our ways toward Miss Smith's dismissal, and of course a banana split dorm feed at the end.