When Someone Dies!
James
R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
©
February 4, 2016
When someone dies that you value, no, that you love,
someone whom you haven’t seen much of during most of your life, and only
remember best from your youth, when that someone dies, something happens to the rhythm of your soul.
Perhaps it is your soul speaking
to you that, although it is eternal, but reminding you that residence in your body in only for a
brief spell. Then again, this may only
be the mythic legends that wells up in you from your Irish ancestors.
George Eric Chalgren, Jr. died January 22, 2016 at
the age of 84. He was two years ahead of
me in school, and you might say that I only knew him occasionally because we
didn’t move in the same circles, and I never had a course in school with him
although we went to the same high school.
In a way, almost from the beginning, he reminded me
of my da. Now, these many decades later,
I find myself remembering the wisdom of that father who went to the seventh grade
at St. Patrick’s Catholic Grammar School, the same school I attended, but beyond
that I didn’t think we had much in common.
Now, I find myself telling my wife, Beautiful Betty, this and that thing
he said about this and that, as if he was the Oracle of Delphi. Eric was clever like my father.
Another comparison was my da was short and compact,
and not afraid of a living soul on the face of the earth. I remember when I was a boy, when he and my
mother had taken my two sisters, my brother and I to Chicago for a day, and we
were crossing the street, my mother holding my little sister in her arms, and a
man in a semi-truck almost failed to stop at a red light, nearly running into
my mother.
My da jumped up on the cab of the truck, and cold
cocked the driver before he could open his mouth. His head spun around like it was a top and a
slumped over the wheel.
Without
ceremony, my da returned to his family, took my mother’s arm and we crossed the
street and went on about our business. I
was about ten at the time. Never having
been spanked by my da, I knew better after that not to talk back to him, so when I
had a problem, I grumbled quietly to myself outside his hearing.
In thinking about Eric, who was about an inch taller
than my da at five-eight to my six-three going on six-four, I remember the
first time I saw him in action. It was
at the local YMCA, where I went to play basketball of a Saturday while going to
St. Pat’s.
Eric was not an athlete, but
blond like I was and quite handsome like my da.
Much as I liked football, basketball and baseball, I
had little interest in ping pong or pool.
The Y had a policy of pool players being only allowed to play a certain amount
of time, and then having to give up the pool table to the next signee.
I was just sitting there reading a Sport’s Illustrated when I heard a
raucous in the area of the pool table.
This little blond guy had a much bigger guy splayed out on the pool
table and was beating the living business out of him.
It was Eric the pugilist, and my first introduction to him.
Later, talking to him, he told me that it was his pool time and this guy was ten minutes into his time, and gave no sign of
surrendering the pool table. With a
smile, he said, “What choice did I have?”
What choice, indeed!
I went home and excitingly told my mother about the
incident. Smoking her perennial
cigarette, she said, “Now, who does that remind you of?” Of course, it was my da.
* *
*
Several months later, now the summer, I lied about
my age and was able to get a sacking and shelving job at the local A&P Super Market because I
was so tall.
Low and behold, who do I
find there, but Eric? We hit it off
immediately, as he remembered talking to me at the Y after his altercations over
the pool table.
The A&P was in the shadow of the courthouse,
where I lived. Even so, after work I would walk with Eric a few blocks his way simply to talk
to him. We discussed books and stuff
kids in my day talked about. He was into
girls. I wasn’t into girls yet, and quite
frankly terrified of them, but not Eric.
It didn’t surprise me because he was quite handsome, funny, and
unabashedly passionate.
Though it was his cleverness that I found most
appealing. He was smart like my da, not
so much book smart, because school grades didn’t seem to mean all that much to
him, but life smart. He knew things that
I didn’t even think about.
I read a lot, too, but mainly about saints, as I
thought I was going to be a Catholic priest.
Eric wasn’t into religion. I don’t
think he even believed in God, but there was no question he believed in
life.
He shared with me the joy he felt in reading,
especially The Fountainhead by Ayn
Rand. He told me about the integrity of
the main character and his consuming passion for life.
I read the book later and told him I read it
quite differently than he had. I was in
high school now, and he was two years ahead of me in school. I reminded Eric that the main character, an
architect, in blowing up his own magnificent structure rather than compromise his
principals didn't compute for me the way it did for him.
"That wasn’t a
rational decision," I said, "but a totally irrational one." Nor was it a display of integrity but an indicator of a flawed
character, obviously a projection of that of the author.'s “Clearly,” I added, “she has an agenda.”
He looked at me under the streetlight, smoking a
cigarette. He was experimenting with
smoking. His stare made me feel uncomfortable. “Fisher,” he said, “that’s quite
profound. I wouldn’t doubt if one day you become
a philosopher.”
I walked home that night filled with warmth, a kind
of warmth that I’ve seldom experienced.
I didn’t know what his words meant, but I knew it was an honest
assessment of me, his new friend.
I’ve
gone through this long life of mine valuing only a handful of people. I’ve never had much affection
for people in general as my attention and focus has always been quite narrow. That has been a mixed blessing. I’m not distracted by what others wish for me
but I’m also not much of a connector with others. I sensed a kindred spirit in Eric.
Work at the A&P was an important chapter in my
life, and I think Eric’s as well. I saw
how clever he was at everything he did.
Even as a boy, I thought he could have managed that store without any
trouble.
We found it pure joy unloading the A&P
semi-trucks of canned goods and produce.
For me, a high school football player, it was good training. In those days, we didn’t have weight training
at school.
On one occasion, when the truck was unloaded and we
were standing around shooting the breeze, Eric asked me if I could put one of
the produce crates over my head. The
crate probably weighed more than one hundred pounds and was quite bulky.
I’m not a big risk taker and shook my head
that I didn’t want to try for fear I might hurt myself.
He egged me on, and so I did it, surprisingly
without much trouble. I put it down and
he picked it up, and did the same, but once he had it over his head, he lost
his balance and fell on his behind with lettuce going all over the place. He wasn’t hurt, but got up laughing like a
hyena. I didn’t laugh. I thought he had been hurt.
About this time, he lost his mother whom I didn’t
know but knew from his comments that she was important to him. I asked Sam Spalding, my boss at the A&P,
if I could go to the funeral. He said, “Yes,”
so I did.
I didn’t know anybody, not even his dad or his sister,
Lu Betty. I felt totally uncomfortable
and out of place, so stood in a corner out of the way. I was asked to accompany everyone to the
grave site, which I did reluctantly, and was extremely self-conscious because
it was clearly a Protestant affair and I was a strict Roman Catholic, wondering
if I was sinning. I saw Eric, of course, at the funeral home and the grave site, but never spoke to him.
So, it was something of a surprise when he took me aside at the
A&P the next time we were both there, and thanked me for coming. “Do you know you were the only one of my
friends who showed up?” I liked the ring
of “friend,” which sounded a lot better than mere acquaintance. After that, we were, indeed, friends and did
much together.
* *
*
Later, I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road with the main character reminding me of Eric. To give you a sense of this, we would go to
the fabulous Clinton Municipal Pool when we stayed until midnight stocking
shelves at the A&P, climb over the pool fence, which was low, and swim in
the nude for an hour or more.
One night three girls came by, girls guys would say
in my day with a reputation for being “fast,” and they asked if they could join us. I was terrified at the thought. What did Eric do? He got out of the water and walked towards
the fence where they were standing, giggling, and of course he was totally in the nude, with them rushing off in terror. We laughed over this until
we got stomach aches.
Like boyhood friends who go their separate ways, you
soon lose track of each other. Eric went
on to school at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he earned a
doctorate in veterinary medicine, and I went to the University of Iowa in Iowa
City, Iowa where I earned a degree in chemistry.
Shortly after joining Standard Brands, Inc.
in R&D, I was called into the U.S. Navy.
While in my second year in the Mediterranean on the
USS Salem (CA-139) as a hospital corpsman, I was given emergency leave to
return home to my da, who was 49, and dying of multiple myeloma.
Never close, I still loved and
respected him completely, and never more than in his dying days, as he
displayed unbelievable physical courage.
Before he died, he talked to each of his four children
separately. I, being the oldest, was the
last to speak to him. “Your mother tells
me that you want to be a writer.” I
nodded. “Well, Jimmy, I hate like hell
to tell you this, but you don’t even write a good letter. How the hell are you ever going to make a
living as a writer?”
The answer was
clearly apparent, I wasn’t, but what my da missed was that you don’t necessarily love something
because you're good at it, or because of its return, but because it feeds something in your soul. How could I tell him that?
I thought he was through with me, but he wasn’t, he
grabbed my arm feebly, as I moved to get up.
“Remember
that summer that George (he always called Eric Chalgren “George”) wanted you to
join him and hitchhike to California, and I said, ‘no’?” I nodded.
“That was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. George was a man, and you were a little boy
in a man’s body. It would have helped
you to grow up.”
The inference was that I was not only a poor writer
but also not very mature. He was right
on both counts, but his words, then, only angered me. He was dying and I was angry. I went to confession and told the priest how
cruel I had been. He listened, but didn’t
say anything, comforting or otherwise. I
was sixteen that summer Eric invited me to go "on the road" with him.
When my da died, I found something in me had died as
well. I went from worrying about making
an impression, doing what others thought was important, being a patriot and a
team player, or being like him to being something totally different.
He had had amazing physical courage, but little
moral courage. He thought everyone was
better than he was because they were better educated, had better connections,
and had more money. He was a yeller at
home but never took on a boss. There is
not a boss in my long life that I haven’t taken on, or a system or circumstance
that I didn’t make clear to those in authority precisely where I stood. And I have the lumps to show for it.
This was markedly shown when I was with Nalco
Chemical Company facilitating a new conglomerate in South Africa during the
time of Apartheid. I not only took on my
company but the Irish Roman Catholic Church of South Africa as well, for the betrayal
of the majority population of that country.
In my mid-thirties, a soaring executive career with
this burgeoning company on the line, I resigned with a wife and four small
children to support and returned to the United States.
My sister, Pat Waddell, had a small reception party
for me in Clinton, Iowa, which included Eric and his wife, Carol, a classmate of mine in high
school. I had not seen Eric since
college. He had a beard, and was his
usual ebullient self, wanting to know about my work in South Africa, South
America and Europe. I watched Carol’s
face as she studied her husband’s, which was clearly bursting with vicarious joy
as I related some of my experiences. “Don’t
get any ideas, buster!” she said to him, and we both laughed knowingly. She didn’t.
Here he was the staid father and husband, and I was
not; here he remained close to home, and I was working the world; here he was
behaving like I had in my youth, and I like him in his. It was like a total reversal in roles and
lifestyles. Go figure!
I would not see him again until my 50th High
School Class Union, where I was given the role of class speaker because I was an
author. Ron McGauvran, who organized the
class reunion, thought it appropriate since Marquis Childs, the celebrated Washington,
D.C. journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author had grown up in Clinton and had given
the commencement address for my high school graduating class.
After the class reunion assembly broke, Eric and I talked briefly. He was once again generous with his praise for my speech and for my new career as
a writer of books, giving seminars and consulting. He said, “Jim, there were two people I looked
up to in my youth. One was Hans
Andreasen, the other was you.”
Hans was a big guy, an athlete and scholar, who went
on to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics at Cornell University in New York, and I had
had this eclectic ill-defined career that defied explanation. Eric was as beautiful as ever, and I carry
that picture of him in my head as I write these words.
In the summer of 2011, BB and I took an extended trip through the Midwest
and the South, hitting all the universities we could, as well as the
Presidential Libraries and State Capitols.
BB did most of the driving over the 4,000 mile jaunt, while I took notes
that I planned to publish as a journal as I did for our trip through the European Balkans, but alas, it has never materialized.
We had planned to stay at the Best Western Motel that Eric
owned, and called for reservations, only to find he had sold it and was fully
retired. He had been a veterinarian of
big animals, and had nearly lost his life when kicked by one, which was the
reason for the career change.
We talked fleetingly on the phone, didn’t say much, as neither one
of us were phone people, but I remember that conversation, and hold it close to
my heart, as I hold him as well.
P.S. To show
how we sublimate pain, I am writing about George Eric Chalgren, Jr., while on
this day, five years ago today, my daughter, Jeanne Marie Fisher was hit and
killed by a driver who left the scene of the accident to leave her dying in the
street in Pinellas Park, Florida. Jeannie
was fifty years old. May Jeannie’s soul
and that of Eric forever rest in peace, and God love them both.
