18 October. The Feast of St. Luke.
The birthday of Floyd Brown.
It began the
night of my father’s funeral, in February, 1978, as I was sitting there on the
altar listening to his voice in my head, pushing me to return to school. And
then other voices intervened with an entirely different injunction: you will
not apply to graduate schools. The priests in Milwaukee who moved to thwart my
desire gave three reasons: first, I was not academically prepared to be
successful in graduate school; second, my psychological state was not stable
enough for me to continue in graduate studies, if by chance a school would
accept me; and third, (and this will be a verbatim quotation), I “had not
displayed sufficient discipline in the exercise of my ministry.” The first
objection was quickly dismissed. My transcript from Johns Hopkins was as good
as a plantation pass, in that matter.
A
psychiatrist friend in Omaha challenged the second impediment. She said, quite
forcefully and clearly, that most of my psychological difficulties seemed to
stem from the treatment I had been subjected to, for over a decade, by those
same priests or their predecessors. And
the third objection was explained as a response to my never having entered the
process of becoming tenure-track while I was teaching at Creighton University.
The irrefutable fact that the Academic Vice-President at Creighton had asked me
to sign a contract as an instructor because he was campaigning to reduce the
number of tenure-track contracts given to Jesuits seemed, somehow to render
that last point forever moot.
Because I
was bound to the promise of entering the academic contest, yet again, and at
the age of 35, I knew very well that no obstacle would be insurmountable. The
ancestors are never idle.
Moving on to
refresh my spirit and expand my talents during a six-month sojourn in Spokane,
Washington, under the guidance of one of the legendary Jesuit spiritual
directors, Fr. Joseph Conwell, I cast my applications into the winds of change
and put my mind to the renewal program in which I was engaged. When the rejection letters arrived from
Harvard and New York University, I was still calm and undisturbed. When the
acceptance letter from Princeton arrived, I remained watchful and hopeful. My heart
was really set on going to Yale because it had the library resources that
excited me beyond all bounds. So the
letter from Yale stunned me, telling me that due to an oversight, my application had been
misplaced and not found until after their deadlines had passed; and that I was
therefore not eligible for any financial assistance and should apply for the
next year’s entrance into the Afro-American Studies program. I had originally applied to the Department of
English, not knowing that there was a subtle tradition of segregation
well-rooted at Yale: African American
literature was not part of the curriculum of the English department. A most
solicitous member of the English faculty took it upon himself to forward my
application to Afro-American Studies, where, he thought, I “would be happier.”
That
initiated the letter that told me the bad news.
The poor, unsuspecting professor who mailed me the letter had no way of
knowing that I was supposed to be at Yale in the fall of 1979. The conversation I had with Professor Robert
B. Stepto, as he waited for a technician to arrive at his house to repair his
furnace, was without any doubt whatsoever the single most important act of
mentoring he may have every performed.
He listened
to me.
He reversed
the decision. The priests of Milwaukee found the funds necessary to enable my
first year of study in New Haven. And I drove East, seeking a few wise men. (In
1979, gender balance was not part of the alchemy at Yale…)
Robert
Stepto never eased up in his belief in and support of me. At our first meeting he asked me why I had
turned down Columbia and Princeton. “Because you have the library and the
faculty I have dreamed about, for years. And if things don’t work out for me,
you will be the first to know.” He
smiled and said, “I don’t doubt that at all.”
And then he told me to sign up for the class that Robert Farris Thompson
was teaching and the seminar that was being conducted by Charles T. Davis. Outside of my family circle I have never been
more at home than I was when he said, “Come in and be at peace.”
Within a few
months, he learned me and I learned us. His advice was unerring. “For your thesis,
and your dissertation, write two pages a day. That way it will never seem too
big a task.” He and Charles Davis told
me that funds would be found to keep me in school and that I would be enrolled
in both the M. A. in Afro-American Studies and the Ph. D. in American Studies,
as soon as I finished applying for the doctoral program. And then they said, “And
we never want you to be treated badly again by the ‘priests in Milwaukee' [and
by extension, in Omaha], so we will find you a job when you are finished,” It
was then that Robert Stepto told me the heart-wounding secret that had been
wrapped up in my file. Some of my priest-brothers had written letters
suggesting that I would indeed not be successful in graduate school. The pain he felt in telling me that was deep.
And the love and appreciation I felt for him was even deeper.
He treated
me like I was a Child of God.
My spring
semester’s total mental spasm, during which I cried – for no apparent reason – for
almost two days was an opportunity for him to drop healing oil into my spirit.
“Well, you got it out of the way, early; good for you. It took some of us a lot
longer to fall apart. So you won’t have to go through that again.”
Then I
finally thanked him, for facilitating every promise; for leveling the path
through the academic thicket; and for being as gentle and steady a support as I
had ever received – joining the seraphim who had been at each oasis of my
struggle to learn: Leonard Waters, SJ, in the early days of my Jesuit career;
John Knoepfle, that wonderful summer of 1967 in St, Louis, who heard a surety
of voice in my poems that I could not at that time discern; and Elliot Coleman,
who transported me to Hopkins with a wave of a fountain pen.
“Oh, it is
easy to ‘go to bat’ for someone when they hand you the bat,” he said. And
smiled.
One very
chilly day in New Haven as we were in his office, talking about my
dissertation, he asked me what I knew about the University of Virginia. “Oh,
they have a successful basketball team, I think…and didn’t Thomas Jefferson
have something to do with it?” By now it
should be apparent that he never failed to find a reason to smile at me. It is
easy, I guess, when someone displays himself a thorough fool.
He made them
an offer they couldn’t refuse. He would arrive with a junior faculty associate
and a senior graduate student. And then Yale made him an offer he couldn’t
refuse. So he remained at Yale and I wound up in Charlottesville, awakened
finally to see the dream that many people saw within me – me, who wanted to do
nothing but be a high school English teacher for the rest of my life.
On the feast
celebrating the man whose name I have taken for my poetry -- “a Gentile among
the Jews”; the faithful companion of Paul on several of his dangerous journeys;
the word artist who dwelt upon the gentle grace of the mother of Jesus and who
brought to our hearts the stories of the poor, the outcast and the culturally
and religiously “other” – on this Feast of St. Luke, I see the gift a mentor
gives, no matter the situation, no matter the ages of those involved.
One
afternoon as I was leaving Robert Stepto’s house, a teenage girl was drifting
down the sidewalk. She stopped and boldly interrupted our conversation with,
“Are y’all brothers? You sure do favor
each other.” Is that not the point,
finally, and primarily?
We should
favor one another. As often as we can,
and for all the right reasons. To accept
the other. To give and receive trust, with no violations by anyone. To see a
promise that has to be nurtured into strength and independence. To know. To know who and what matters.
My father
said, “Go.” Robert Stepto said, “Come, be with us.”
And the
evening before the 1985 commencement at Yale, at a reception hosted by members
of the Afro-American Studies extended family, my mother, upon meeting Robert
Stepto, looked back and forth, from him to me, and said, “But Joseph, he looks
younger than you,”
“He is,
Mama, he is.”
And that has
made this friendship all the more precious.
