The Peripatetic Philosopher shares an intimacy:

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 50^th 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.