Wabash College - Class of 1991

As a kid, I never knew the day of my mom’s birthday.

She wouldn’t tell us.

Even now, I still have to ask my brother or refer to Outlook to tell me. It’s the first week of April, I know. And don’t get me wrong. This boy loves his momma very much. But her reticence to convey the date of her birth has instilled a kind of aphasia in me. My brother, David, suffers from it, too.

“Is it the 6th or the 7th?” I ask him every year.

“Damned if I can remember,” he’ll respond. I can hear the scratching of the temple over the phone, I swear I can.

Maybe it’s by design, but lately I started to wince when someone asked me when my birthday is. It’s because I remember my mom’s 40th.

It was 1980, and she wouldn’t come out of her room. All day she was hold up in there like Charles Foster Kane in Xanadu.

Dad had to cook.

Flash forward to last week and the impending advent of my 40th birthday.

On a rational level, it should be no big deal: just another date. On a vain level, it shouldn’t matter: I still look youthful, spritely even. But in that deep subterranean river of insecurity that flows slowly toward the Hades of the soul, I was in hell.

A week before, a sustained panic attack lodged itself in my gut. I became morose, despondent, cheerless. I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to go out.

Don’t overreact to me saying this—and certainly don’t add this to my obituary should a double-decker bus prematurely shuffles me loose the mortal coil—but I know why people commit suicide. For those poor souls depressed and desperate enough, it can be the only thing they can control in their lives.

So, yes, I had my It’s a Wonderful Life moment, I’ll admit it. And no, I’m not being melodramatic here. The pernicious thing about being unemployed is the feeling of worthlessness that accompanies it. That and depleting my savings in its wake. I have leapt the chasm between being underqualified when applying for dream jobs to being overqualified when I go on interviews lately.

I felt like I had no control over my life.

Christ. I was miserable enough on my 30th. It felt like graduating college at the height of your power on campus. It felt like being kicked out of the cool club. But a decade later, things are different. It’s not so much a fear of getting older like it was then. It runs more along the lines of a desperate frustration of not being where I want to be in life. I want to do more. I want to be more.

But just like the current crop of twentysomethings has to learn, just because you want something doesn’t mean you get or even deserve it. Sometimes, even working hard for something doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get it.

It’s life, dammit. It’s not supposed to be fair.

To move the story along, I snapped out of it. (Can’t you tell?) Somewhere in the middle of the Christmas party that doubled as my birthday celebration. I realized that, yeah, stupid, you have made an impact. You are of worth. Times are tough and you need to be, too. And most importantly, you have people who love you as a person, namely, (without names):

A friend who is mortified that he may lose his business, even though it’s well-frequented by new and regular patrons.

A buddy with a new daughter he hasn’t held in his arms yet; She was born prematurely months before her due date and still lies in NICU of Riley Hospital.

A pal who has been with a loyal and productive employee of his company for eight years, but who ducks out every Friday afternoon because “That’s when they let people go.”

Maybe, too,  it was 50 or so little messages greeting my Facebook profile on Friday morning.

I support my friends, and they support me. That’s the way it should be. I’ve always thought that the psychiatric profession would be doomed if everyone just had a loyal cadre of true confidants.

In April 2000, my mom took my brother, my sister, and I to Chicago for the weekend. In the aftermath of my father’s death, we went to restaurants—steaks at Ditka’s, dim sum on Rush St., stroganoff shots of chilled vodka at a Russian place in the Loop—and to clubs—Second City and Buddy Guy’s. We all truly had fun as a family. It was my mom’s 60th birthday.

Thinking of that experience, somehow I can’t wait to turn 60.

Photo: Me snapping out of my milestone birthday funk at the Birdy’s Christmas Party, taken by another great friend of mine.

The Alumni Office wanted me to pass along the following information to those of you who are Indiana residents. The process for obtaining or renewing your Wabash license plates is much easier.

Here’s how it works:

• Alumni, parents, students, and friends with vehicles registered in Indiana are eligible for Wabash license plates.
• When requesting your Wabash plate from the BMV (online, by mail, or at the license branch), indicate that you want to renew your existing plate or get a new Wabash plate.
• The BMV will now collect your $25 gift to Wabash and the $15 administrative fee for each plate purchased. You no longer need a validated form from Wabash!

• When requesting a Wabash plate from the BMV, be sure to indicate that you want the BMV to release your name and address for gift recognition purposes. By doing so, Wabash will issue a gift receipt for your $25 contribution and count you as an Annual Fund donor.
• The BMV will collect gifts of $25 for each plate you purchase. If you regularly support Wabash with gifts greater than $25, we would appreciate your continued generosity by making those gifts directly to Wabash by mail, phone, or online at www.wabash.edu/giving.

I was doing research last week on a cover story for Indianapolis Monthly on great families and their legacy to the city and state. A particular passage in Dr. James Madison’s biography of Eli Lilly was striking:

The pharmaceutical manufacturer was loyal to his alma mater, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and made large contribution s to it, but he showed little interest in technical or professional schools. He thought professors should be “men who have had some practical experience and not simply one hundred percent theoreticians,” but he believed firmly in the values derived from a traditional liberal arts education, especially at “small liberal arts colleges like Wabash without too much government influence in them.”…

Wabash College was Lilly’s favorite. Founded by Presbyterian Yankees before the Civil War, it remained a men’s school with high standards and, under President Frank Sparks, aggressive leadership. Lilly became a trustee of the college in 1946 and seldom missed a meeting until his death [in 1977]. Over the years, he gave large sums of money to the institution. …Asked about this relationship in a 1973 interview, Lilly responded that he liked the men who served Wabash as trustees and presidents, especially Sparks, and then added, doubtless with a smile, that perhaps his large support was due also to the fact that Wabash was the first college to give him an honorary degree, which it did in 1938. Lilly also liked the school’s strong liberal arts curriculum and its graduates. Several Wabash alumni became associates in his activities. One, Eugene Beesley, was the first non-Lilly to become president of the company and later the president of the Lilly Endowment.

That great tradition continues with a new five-year $375,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment to Wabash to help fund the establishment of the Wabash College Business Leadership Program. You can find details of the program and the grant here.

But you don’t have to be a drug company magnate to help fund such programs or initiatives. When you give any amount to the Annual Fund, you help provide such initiatives like the first Wabamazoo Case Study Competition recently held on campus. As importantly, you can give your time—yeah, I know you all are super busy—to be a resource for programs like this.

In the wake of the shakeups on campus this semester, alumni availability and guidance to our students has become more crucial. I’ll have more posts on this topic, rest assured.

In 1947, Eli Lilly established four scholarships for Wabash students. And that initial gift keeps on giving.

Late this summer, I stopped into Steve Charles office on campus. He’s the editor of the Wabash Magazine, and I wanted to explore some topics for writing for the magazine. I’ve been itching to get back to some real writing (as evidenced by the occasional essay on this blog), and the premier publication of our alma mater seemed like the best place to start.

The topic came up about my occasion to interview Indiana author and legendary curmudgeon Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and I said, “Well, you know the story about how I landed the interview is probably more interesting that the interview itself.” Steve’s good about organically finding the crux of a good story. “Why don’t you write that up?” he suggested.

Even after five or six years, the tale was clear in my mind. I’ve had occasion to tell it to the sorry soul who bothered to ask, so I already had it reasonably fashioned in my mind. An hour or two at the laptop, and it was done, fully formed like Aphrodite emerging from Zeus’ head.

Here’s the link. I hope you enjoy it. I promise that there’s more to come.

No, Sean Fahey, I don’t think I was being too hard on ol’ Kurt!

In addition to posting the audio from last Thursday’s student-run Chapel and video from last Saturday’s memorial service, the College has posted a trove of great Bill Placher media on its iTunes U site. (By the way, the Chapel is particularly moving, especially the thoughts of classmate, colleague, and friend, Dr. David Blix at the end.)

You can listen to two C&T lectures from the early ’80s, his 1990 LaFollette Lecture, and two Chapel Talks from last year. It seems fitting that they inaugurate the folder entitled “Great Professors of Wabash” with Dr. Placher.

A few more online tidbits:
A remembrance from last week’s Bachelor
“Is the Bible True?”
“Fighting Atheist” (Critique of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens)
Biliography of published works

I was paging through the latest copy of the Wabash Magazine that appeared in my mailbox yesterday. I came across this letter from Rob Vega, which I’m reprinting here.

I read of Brenda and CP Bankart’s retirement in the Spring 2008 edition of WM with bittersweet emotions. Many of my fonder memories of Wabash involve one or the both of them.

What I remember most about CP and Brenda is their sense of humor and their deep kindness. In the midst of all the macho intellectual and athletic competition, they helped make Wabash a more warm and supportive place. I am always grateful for their tireless work at making bold, cocky Wabash boys into patient, humane Wabash men.

Wabash will be a lesser place without them, but I wish them joy and happiness in all they do.

To: God
From: Hugh Vandivier
Subject: Dr. William C. Placher

I have to tell you, God. I’m a little mad at you right now.

No, I’m more than a little mad. I’m hurt and angry and annoyed.

Bill Placher is dead, and you took him from us way too soon. How could you?

Oh, yeah, I know. What gives me the right to berate a deity, even at the passing one of your most faithful and effective of servants?

Because Wabash, and especially Dr. William C. Placher, taught me to take time and muse the deeper significance, to think critically, to inquire. To ask, even You.

So I sit here, reeling, as vivid memories and stories wash over me like a cool sea spray:

• I have often told high school seniors and their parents at admissions events of taking the best class at Wabash at the most inconvenient time. It only met once a week, at the worst possible time that you could ever schedule a class: 3:10 on a Friday. It was a half-semester course solely devoted to the Dante’s Divine Comedy. Read ten cantos a week and discuss. The Inferno, The Purgatorio, The Paradiso. No midterm, no final. Just one paper with your choice of subject. Few of us missed it, even during Pan Hel. Dr. Placher even invited Dr. Kubiak to a class to read selections in their original Italian. It was like high-level C&T with great discussions. All the while, Dr. Placher often officiated silently with a few grand bursts of “Ahh” as reaction to our better insights.
• Kyle Carr ‘85 told me about the time when the first Ghostbusters movie came out in the summer of 1984. He and a classmate were set to road trip up West Lafayette to see it. (Yeah, believe it or not, the blockbuster wasn’t playing in Crawfordsville). They asked Dr. Placher if he would like to come along, and he assented to joining the road trip. After watching the movie, all the way back down 231 to Crawfordsville, there sat Dr. Placher in the backseat snickering to himself, bemused at the concept of the Sta Puft Marshmallow Man as the embodiment of the destroyer of worlds and the end of the universe. I definitely would have loved to have seen that reaction from him.
• The summer I spent before my senior year at Wabash was a lonely one on campus. A fault of my own procrastination, I had the unenviable task of laying out the majority of that year’s yearbook. Days and weeks were spent hold up on the second floor of Hovey Cottage electronically shoehorning text into the pages of the book. On two separate occasions, I heard footfalls ascending the creaky wooden stairs. In popped Dr. Placher asking me if I was busy that night to attend a little cookout at his place. For me and the handful of other students on campus, he bought some steaks and a few bottles of red wine. What followed were two occasions of great food, better conversation, and unparalleled generosity.
• I fondly recalled attending one of Dr. Melissa Butler’s famed after-graduation parties and watching Bill Placher noodling through some Tom Lehrer tunes on her piano including the “Vatican Rag.”

As we have seen this week, Bill Placher stories like these have covered the campus like the first winter snow. I’d like to think that they have elicited a collective realization: As special as he made each us all feel individually, Bill Placher was just as close of a mentor and listener and friend to so many more of us.

Further, in a great stroke of irony, You, God, have snatched away the very man who can best explain to us why people of such great teaching stature and influence are taken from us way before their time. I guess I’m also mad because of a selfish realization that Dr. Placher will no longer be there to guide current students, to mentor future generations, and to infect us—as he put it—“with that virus of intellectual excitement.” I suppose, in my vanity, I just expected that Dr. Placher would always be there, at Wabash, as he has always been for so many of us.

Last weekend, I accompanied the Wabash swim team to Carthage College for a two-day meet. Talking with the team in the locker room before the morning session, I honored Dr. Placher by telling them of the first class I took from him, Phil 5: Ancient Greek Philosophy. I recalled the paper I wrote for the class on arête, the ideal generally translated as “excellence” but more fully interpreted as being fraught with a fulfillment of one’s function to a complete extent. I used the lessons I learned from Dr. Placher to encourage the team to swim to their fullest potential.

I then realized that Bill Placher is still with us, transcending his physical form and spreading through each one of us to become that insatiable intellectual curiosity dwelling within each of us.

I’m not particularly religious by nature or by upbringing, but today I found myself rereading the book of Job. I even watched YouTube interpretations, a synopsis from South Park (of all things), and analysis from Slate Magazine, searching for meaning in the loss of Dr. Placher.

And then came my second realization. By snatching him from us as you have, we continue to learn. We continue to inquire and to search. We continue to challenge as he did. That is his legacy, and maybe his loss opens us up more to You.

So maybe in the great Christian fashion I can indeed forgive You. Thank you for giving me and countless Wabash men like me the opportunity to learn from so great a man.

Bill Placher has been one of your greatest gifts, and he will live in the life of Wabash College forever.

I’m in shock.

Beloved Wabash professor Bill Placher ‘70 passed away this weekend.

I minored in Bill Placher, and currently have no words. I will soon, but feel free for now to add your own memories…

UPDATE

The official announcement from the College:

Dear Wabash Friends,

It is with a tremendously heavy heart that I inform you of the passing of Bill Placher ’70, the LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Wabash. Dr. Placher died in his temporary apartment in Minnesota, where he was serving a one-year appointment as the Kilian McDonnell Writer-In-Residence at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John’s University. He was 60 years old.

Dr. Placher graduated summa cum laude from Wabash in 1970 and was elected into Phi Beta Kappa and Eta Sigma Phi. He earned his master’s degree in philosophy from Yale University in 1974 and completed his Ph.D. a year later, also from Yale. He began teaching at Wabash as an instructor during the 1972-73 and 1974-75 academic years, and was named an assistant professor in 1975. He rose to full professor in 1984 and became the LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in 1999. He was the author of 12 books and editor of another three. He chaired the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Wabash from 1996-2002. He was also the Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.

“As you all know, Bill was one of the most influential and revered professors at Wabash,” said President Pat White. “In a long line of great teachers, mentors, and scholars, Bill will be remembered as one of the legends. As a student, faculty member, leader, and role model for students, faculty, and all of us who love Wabash, Bill Placher was our teacher and  will remain an exemplar of the best imagination of the mind, heart, and spirit of the College.”

We have no details on funeral arrangements at this time. More information will be provided on the Wabash College website as it becomes available.

Please join me in reflecting on the many wonderful ways Bill Placher touched our lives and the impact he had on this college and its students.

Jim Amidon
Director of Public Affairs and Marketing
Secretary of the College
Wabash College