I was a physics major in college. That meant I treasured the rare slots in my schedule to take humanities electives. I only double-dipped one professor. Well two. One was a literature professor, Constance Coiner. I had to drop her British Lit class during Quantum Mechanics, but made a point  to register for the next class she was teaching. That’s how I wound up taking Multicultural American Women Writers. If that sounds like a joke, bite me. It was an amazing opportunity, and I treasure the authors I read in that class. I got so mad at the book Storming Heaven, that she gave me an F on the paper, and asked if I was OK.  Professor Coiner died when TWA Flight 800 blew up in 1996. She was taking her daughter to see Paris. 

William Haver taught history. I loved his medieval Japanese history class so much I literally begged him to allow me to use my last elective hours to take his senior seminar on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That was the entire class. We spent sixteen weeks talking about one morning. Of course that’s not true. We talked about everything that led up to and from that singular event.

He let me and Bill Church in, even though we weren’t history students, because we offered to explain the science on the bomb. We brought radioactive material ang geiger counters to one class. Clearly he let us in because we were passionate enough to plead, when we could have taken basket weaving for the credit. I worked harder in that class than I did in any other class my senior year, because I cared more about being in that seat than I did any other room senior year. We read the poetry of Japanese men with radiation burns on their body, trying to come to grips with the devastation of their homes. He introduced us to the guilt of the survivors who remained haunted by the deaths of their families, because there were no bodies to mourn over and bury. I think of that daily now, as so many people in America, including my wife, could not attend funerals of their friends and family, for fear of perpetuating COVID by gathering together to perform the rituals.

During a class when I was disputing another student’s opinion about an Italian Communist whose name I don’t remember, Prof. Haver interrupted to debate me. The ninety seconds I spent with my ideas under his scrutiny that night changed the course of my career. I reached out to thank him a few years ago, and that he remembered who I was after twenty years is one of the sweet joys of my life.