L.D. JOHNSON MEMORIAL LECTURE
By Charles A. “Tony” Arrington
January 10, 1983
“WHAT REALLY MATTERS.” I’m not sure how that phrase is to be punctuated. Does it end in a period or a question mark? What I want to do is first play a game (the question mark) and then tell you some stories (the period). You all know that I am a physical chemist, or at least you know that I am a chemist. Physical chemistry deals with the application of the methods of physics and mathematics to chemistry. One of the primary activities of physical chemistry is the development of mathematical expressions which represent physical reality. Let’s play that game for a few minutes.
In the early sixties John Kenneth Galbraith under the pseudonym Mark Epernay published a delightful parody of politics and quantification trends in the social sciences The Mclandress Dimension. In this essay he describes the contribution of Dr. Hershel McLandress in the development of a significant measure of personality—the McLandress Coefficient or the McL-C for short. The McL-C is the average time between the use of any form of the first person singular pronoun in a person’s conversation or public utterances. Thus a short McL-C is characteristic of a person whose conversation and presumably whose thoughts are continually filled with references to himself, while a large McL-C is the trait of someone who is able to think of a great many other things for a considerable length of time before once again putting himself at the center of his thoughts. The McL-C is a value-free parameter. Would you like to know the McL-C of some important figures of the day? Here are some examples:
Bob Hope 18 minutes Art Buchwald 2 hours
Elizabeth Taylor 3 minutes Martin Luther King 4 hours
Robert Oppenheimer 3.5 hours Billy Graham middle
Edward Teller 3 min. 10 sec. Norman Vincent Peale middle range
Nikita Kruschev 3 minutes John Kennedy 29 minutes
Harold MacMillan 12 minutes Lyndon Johnson low min.
Richard Nixon 3 seconds
Charles deGaulle 7.5 hours (corrected to 1.5 minutes upon recognition that reference to “la France” is in his case a personal reference)
With the ground having been broken by such an eminent sociometricist, I would like to apply my own professional talents to exploring the possibility of developing an even more complex measure, which I choose to call the “Mattering Parameter.” If this effort is successful, what really matters can be readily determined by examination of the mattering parameter with the saving of a great deal of posturing, debating, equivocation and wringing of hands. Ultimately one would hope to be able to eliminate such archaic institutions as the congress, state legislature and local school board. We would likely then have no need of State Baptist Conventions and might even be able to get by at Furman without a dean and could reduce faculty committees by half.
As I envision it, the mattering parameter, MP, is a complex function which maximizes the double integral over time and population in the “well-being” space. At this point I will have to use the blackboard to make everything clear . (A facsimile of the figure accompanying the talk is given in the attached figure and is deliberately obscure.) The integral is nothing more than a summation over all events of the contribution made to universal well being by each event. Thus any act or circumstance which contributes to the well being of some set of individuals will make a positive contribution to the MP, while any factor which diminishes the collective well-being will have a negative contribution to the MP. In the process of integration each event is automatically weighted by the number of individuals affected and the length of time over which the impact of the event is operative.
Now, what will we put into the MP that will result in the maximization of the universal well being? How is well being measured? What about an occurrence that produces smiles? That would make a positive contribution to the MP, while activities which produce frowns or tears should certainly appear with a negative sign since they adversely affect well being. Any problems so far? Well, there is a problem with events producing tears of joy, which should be considered as positive terms. So we will have to distinguish two types of tearful events. Or what about the smile produced by a good dirty joke? Is the sense of well being associated with a cold beer after a long, hot run or sparkling champagne on New Year’s Eve legitimately included as a positive term in the MP? Certainly one should at least allow for the negative contribution of the misery and suffering arising from DUI events.
We must look beyond smile-inducing circumstances—or else my Chemistry 12 classes could hardly be considered to matter. I will definitely want to include a contribution reflection knowledge, and at the same time put an indicator of ignorance in the denominator of the knowledge term in the MP. While we are talking about knowledge, where is the grade point average included in the MP? In this case I’m afraid we will find a difference of opinion– faculty might include GPA with a small weighting coefficient in the numerator, students would seem to have a significantly larger weighting factor, while parents and medical school admissions committees appear to want to include GPA as an exponential term in the MP. Of course, we would have to develop a more complete knowledge factor that would include separately such items as books read, papers published, and programs watched on PBS.
The MP should in addition contain some contribution from such considerations as length of life and state of health. But does everything that contributes to a lengthening of life make a positive contribution to this function? How do we quantify the effect of billions of dollars spent for sophisticated health care in the developed countries which might relieve more suffering if they could somehow be directed effectively towards the needs of the unfortunate multitudes living in abject poverty and ignorance?
It would be easier to construct this MP if the integration were over a more limited population. Well-being cannot be measured solely in terms of length of life, but surely one must include as a negative contribution a war factor containing the life-threatening, misery-producing potential of conventional and nuclear armaments, bloated national pride and macho genetic composition. To be fair though this factor should include a denominator representing the deterrence of aggressive, belligerent individuals and institutions who might by their unchallenged force of will bring about an overwhelming negative contribution to the MP.
How would we construct an MP to take into account those important factors associated with the economy, romance, crime and punishment, athletic success, wilderness preservation and on and on? It is fun to play this game in an abstract, detached way, but we, of course, realize that it is not a game but a part of the very fabric of life itself. Wouldn’t it be convenient though if such a quantifiable, reliable function were accessible on the computer to make our individual and collective decisions for us?
I should note that as I considered the composition of this mattering parameter, I had a difficult time deciding just what to do with accumulated wealth – perhaps because I have had so little experience in dealing with such a concern – and I managed to stop before deciding where to include financial gain in the formula. Also I have not been able to justify in any way the inclusion of an individual’s denominational preference in the mattering parameter, although I can acknowledge that an individual’s MP might well include a term for himself that reflects his choice of denomination, specific church and even individual pew within that church building.
Although I enjoyed the challenge of constructing a mattering parameter to account for “what really matters,” I know you realize as I do the irony and futility of such an exercise. The dilemma can be illustrated by a personal example – my own attitude concerning nuclear disarmament. Professor Price spoke directly concerning this issue in his lecture last fall, and his remarks reflected my own feelings as well as those of a growing number of people throughout the country.
This past December, 1982, George Kistiakowsky died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 82. Kisty was my advisor and mentor while I was a graduate student at Harvard. The last fifteen or so years of his life were devoted with great energy and sincerity towards the goal of nuclear disarmament. He was an outspoken opponent of the attitude which seeks security behind the potential of total annihilation of one’s enemies. And yet, in his earlier days George Kistiakowsky made a major contribution to the development of the first atomic bomb and was one of two people to spend the night at the bomb test site before that first explosion, that so irrevocably pushed mankind into a new era puzzled by the god-like power clutched hesitatingly in his hand. I never asked Kisty why he had taken part in that effort, but obviously for him at that time it really mattered that he undertake that work.
During my stay at the University of Utah I developed friendships with several people who have recently left everything – friends, relatives, possessions to escape (their word) from the oppressive regimes they were living under in Eastern Europe. A month ago I sat at a group Christmas party there and saw the tears in the captivating blue eyes of a Czech mother who had only recently joined her husband here after a two-year separation. But next March she has to go back to join her children, who are not allowed to travel with her. Dusan and Jarka hope that some day they will be able to reunite their family in this country, but Dusan says that he will not go back. He personally destroyed two Soviet tanks with a pick axe and flaming torch when the Russians rolled into Prague and interrupted his freshman year in college, an opportunity made possible only by the enlightenment of the Dubcek regime. For many such people it matters very much that the United States represents a military power sufficiently strong to counteract the threat of an expansion of the ideology that has so directly threatened their well being. I can find no reliable formula which tells me how much weight to give to the legitimate claims of both sides in the issue of the laying-down of arms.
I am then unable to quantify “what really matters” on an issue that really does matter. In some cases I find it difficult to discern what really matters by an objective analysis involving the intellect or to describe mattering to another person using the language of logic and reason.
It appears that I have given up hope of delineating for you a convincing analysis of what really matters. Instead allow me to tell you a few stories – five to be exact. I could tell one or a hundred such stories, stories that will not be new to you and that many of you could tell better than I.
Story 1: Francis of Assisi
As a young man Francis had every reason to be content and satisfied with his lot in life. His father’s prosperity as a cloth merchant provided enough money to support a life style that included fine clothes, charming companions and the arms needed for an aspiring knight and military leader to engage in an occasional battle with the neighboring Perugians. Then Francis had a series of dreams. His mattering parameter inverted with serious consequences. Let me read to you from Johannes Jorgensen’s biography.
One April day in the year 1207, Pietro di Bernardone stood behind the counter in his shop, when he heard a great noise in the street – the sound of many voices, shouting, screaming, and laughter. The noise approached nearer and nearer; now it seemed to be at the nearest corner. The old merchant signed to one of his clerks to run out and see what was going on.
“Un pazzo, Messer Pietro!” was the clerk’s contemptuous report. “It is a crazy man, whom the boys are chasing!”
The clerk stood yet a moment and turned around white in the face. He had seen who the crazy man was . . .
And a moment after, Pietro di Bernardone stood in the doorway, and saw in the midst of the howling crowd who now were close to the house, his son, his Francis, his first-born, for whom he had dreamt such great things, and for whom he had nourished such bright hopes. . . . There he came now home at last, in a disgraceful company, pale and emaciated to the eye, with disheveled hair and dark rings under his eyes, bleeding from the stones thrown at him, covered with the dirt of the street, which the boys had cast upon him, , , , This was his Francis, the pride of his eyes, the support of his age, the joy of his life and his comfort – it had come to this, to this had all these crazy, cursed ideas brought him.
Sorrow, shame, and anger almost overcame Pietro di Bernardone. Nearer and nearer came the shouting and howling throng – mercilessly grinning they called to him where he stood upon his steps: “See here, Pietro di Bernardone, we bring you your pretty son, your proud knight – now he is coming home from the war in Apulia, and has won the princess and half the kingdom!”
The old merchant could control himself no longer. He had to give way to rage to avoid weeping. Like a wild beast he ran down into the mob, striking and kicking to right and left, until the crowd, fairly frightened, opened and dispersed. Without a word, he seized his son and took him up into his arms. His rage gave the old man a giant’s strength: raging and gritting his teeth he bore Francis through the house and finally threw him, almost exhausted and out of his senses, down upon the floor in a dark cellar, where he locked him in. With trembling hands he stuck the keys in his belt and returned to his work.
Several days later Francis appeared before the Bishop in the courtroom. Francis stood up in silence with streaming eyes. “My Lord,” said he, turning towards the Bishop, “I will not only give him the money cheerfully, but also the clothes I have received from him.” And before anyone had time to think what he intended to do, he had disappeared into an adjoining room, back of the courtroom, a moment later to reappear, naked, except for a girdle of haircloth about his loins, and with his clothes on his arm. All involuntarily stood up – Pietro di Bernardone and his son Francis were face to face. And with a voice that trembled with emotion, the young man said, as he looked over the leads of the audience as if he saw someone or something in the distance:
“Listen, all of you, to what I have to say! Hitherto I have called Pietro di Bernardone father. Now I return to him his money and all the clothes I got from him, so that hereafter I shall not say: Father Pietro di Bernardone, but Our Father who art in heaven!”
Francis shortly thereafter renounced his father and his wealth and acknowledged only his Father in Heaven.
The story that follows is a familiar one even if the details are somewhat indistinct for us. Francis embraced a life of total poverty and total commitment to his understanding of the Christian gospel. His example drew to his side followers from both great and humble families – followers who shared with him the path of self-denial and service. The way he chose was not an easy one. He suffered from blindness, rejection and disease and had to deal with jealousy and dissension among his most devout followers. But who can doubt that Francis of Assisi knew what really mattered.
His love of nature is legendary. It is rare to see a statue or painting of Francis without the birds who were his brothers and to whom he preached with simple devotion.
He had compassion for the needs of his followers. Once in the middle of the night one of the brothers cried out, “I am dying. I am dying.” Francis and the others got up, lit a candle and asked who had cried out. The ailing brother identified himself, and Francis asked, “What ails thee, my brother, to make thee die?” The brother’s reply – “I am dying of hunger!” So Francis got everybody up and made them all eat, recognizing that not everyone had the same capacity for self-denial and not wanting the hungry brother to feel that he was betraying his vows.
St. Francis was a poet, and I want to close this story with his Canticle to Brother Sun or the Sun Song.
Most high omnipotent good lord,
Thine are the praises, the glory, the honor, and all benedictions.
To thee alone, Most High, do they belong,
And no man is worthy to mention thee.
Praised be thou, my Lord, with all thy creatures,
Especially the honored Brother Sun,
Who makes the day and illumines us through thee.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor
Bears the signification of thee, Most High One.
Praised be thou, my Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
Thou hast formed them in heaven clear and previous and beautiful.
Praised be thou, my Lord, for Brother Wind,
And for the air and cloudy and clear and every weather,
By which thou givest sustenance to thy creatures.
Praised be thou, my Lord, for Sister Water,
Which is very useful and humble and previous and chaste.
Praised by thou, my Lord, for Brother Fire,
By whom thou lightest the night,
And he is beautiful and jocund and robust and strong.
Praised by thou, my Lord, for our sister Mother Earth,
Who sustains and governs us,
And produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbage.
Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks
And serve him with great humility.
Francis died lying naked on the dirt floor of a small hut in the woods of his Little Portion, longing for Sister Death to come to relieve his suffering but singing quietly with his brothers. As his spirit left him his brothers, the larks sang their farewell.
For Francis possessions did not matter but poetry did.
Story 2: Roger Williams
It may be difficult for you in an instant to transcend 400 years and shift your thoughts from sunny Italy to a New England January in 1636, caught in the frozen, grey, numbing grip of those northeastern winters. Roger Williams as he wrote years later had “unkindly and unchristianly (been) . . . driven from my house and land and wife and children . . . in winter snow, which I feel yet.” Banished from the colony of Massachusetts because of his challenge to the civil and religious authorities, he slowly made his difficult journey south into the country which was to become Rhode Island and in this journey walked his way into a place in history where he is esteemed for his vigorous defense of the principle of religious liberty. The end of this winter’s journey found him befriended by Narragansett Indians, who surely saved his life. For three months he lived with them in their “filthy smoke holes” and began an association which was to last the rest of his life. He was to publish the first book on their language and became one of the few English settlers who recognized and defended the Indians’ rights to the land on which they lived.
But the story I want to tell of Roger Williams is not a story of adventure, peril or deprivation but a story of words. He was a deeply religious man, perhaps a fanatic, whose life was apparently directed by his strongly held convictions. He was contentious and seems to have been one of those people who attracted controversy and, without trying hard, generated arguments. He was admired by many, despised by many, but I suspect that he was loved by few. After his banishment he continued his fight in a number of convoluted, at times tedious writings with titles such as “The Bloody Tenant of Persecution for Cause of Conscience” and “The Bloody Tenant Yet More Bloody: by Mr. Cotton’s endeavor to wash it white.” I think only the most dedicated scholar could read through these writings now to learn first hand what Williams had to say. But you should hear some of what Williams did say.
“In vain have English Parliaments permitted English Bibles in the poorest English houses, and the simplest man or woman to search the Scriptures, if yet against their souls’ persuasion from the Scripture, they should be forced (as if they lived in Spain or Rome itself, without the sight of a Bible) to believe as the church believes.”
“Sir, I must be so humbly bold to say that ‘tis impossible for any man or men to maintain their Christ by their sword and to worship a true Christ, to fight against all consciences opposite to theirs, and not to fight against God in some of them.”
“ . . . (I) had rather that Mahometanism were permitted amongst us, than that one of God’s children should be persecuted.”
“The civil sword (therefore) cannot rightly act either in restraining the souls of the people from worship or in constraining them to worship, considering that there is not a title in the New Testament of Christ Jesus that commits the forming or reforming of His spouse and church to the civil and worldly power . . .”
(Williams attributes this statement to Cromwell, but it is not clear whether the statement is Williams’ or Cromwell’s.)
In the epilogue of his book on Roger Williams, Perry Miller writes:*
The American character has inevitably been molded by the fact that in the first years of colonization there arose this prophet of religious liberty. Later generations may not always have understood his thought; they may have imagined that his premises were something other than the actual ones, but they could not forget him or deny him. He exerted little or not direct influence on theorists of the Revolution and the Constitution, who drew on quite different intellectual sources, yet as a figure and a reputation he was always there to remind Americans that no other conclusion than absolute religious freedom was feasible in this society. The image of him in conflict with the righteous founders of New England could not be obliterated; all later righteous men would be tormented by it until they learned to accept his basic thesis, that virtue gives them no right to impose on others their own definitions.
Wouldn’t it be fun to have Roger Williams deliver the convention sermon at next year’s South Carolina Baptist Convention? He was baptized by the Anabaptists, by the way, but soon became disillusioned and went his own way, maintaining his friendship with then, however.
* Epilogue The Significance of Roger Williams for the American Tradition
Story 3: Josiah Willard Gibbs
Josiah Willard Gibbs – the name sounds as if he must have been one of the staunch New England Puritans against whom Roger Williams struggled. New England at least is correct, but Gibbs lived two hundred years later and was Professor of Mathematical Physics at Yale. There is no drama in the story of Gibbs. His life was so ordinary and uneventful that even now I hesitate to relate it to you. In spite of these misgivings I will tell you about J. Willard Gibbs because his contributions serve to illustrate in an effective way one more aspect of “mattering.” The effectiveness of this story lies in part, I think, in the absence of drama – which in itself provides a dramatic impact in much the same way that a bare stage can convey more meaning than a lavish set.
How can anything that really matters come out of 19th century New Haven? What can possibly be of significance that is not in the history books? If 99% of the population polled in a random sampling of educated Americans never heard of Gibbs, surely he did nothing that really mattered. Against such questions I state that the ideas generated in the mind of this unspectacular scholar have had an impact on 20th century life perhaps as great as that of any other single individual. Gibbs was the father of chemical thermodynamics.
His own father was Professor of Sacred Literature at Yale – a sound scholar and good father. Gibbs’ mother was a noteworthy woman of unusual intelligence and accomplishment who provided a rich and stimulating home life for her four children. Young Willard was educated at the Hopkins Grammar School and at Yale. One of his grammar school classmates wrote of him in an 1850 poem:
“Next to him Gibbs with visage grave
Sits in the seat our Rector to him gave.
A student he – and one who seldom looks
With playful countenance from off his books.”
You see what I mean by lack of drama! In 1863 Gibbs received the Ph.D. degree from Yale – only the second Ph.D. degree to be given in science in the United States and the first in engineering. For three years he and his sisters traveled in Europe, where Gibbs studied with some of the world’s most eminent physicists at Paris, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1869 he and his unmarried sister returned to New Haven and settled into the family house on High Street, where they lived together for the rest of their lives. Gibbs’ chief pleasures were walking across the countryside and entertaining the neighborhood children on outings.
The minutes of the Yale Corporation of July 13, 1871, record that “Mr. Josiah Willard Gibbs, of New Haven, was appointed Professor of Mathematical Physics, without salary, in the Department of Philosophy and the Arts.” He was to serve for ten years in this capacity without salary, living on the small inheritance left by his father. But during this time he published three papers which were to become the cornerstone of the application of thermodynamics to the problem of chemical equilibrium. When these papers were presented to the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, no one on the publication committee was able to understand the work, and it was necessary to take up a subscription among the Yale faculty and businessmen of New Haven to defray the costs of publication. One man was able to understand the importance of Gibbs’ work – James Clerk Maxwell in England, and because he said it was good, everyone took note.
Gibbs had made it to the “big time.” Honors and recognition came his way, and in 1880 Yale offered him a salary of $2,000 to counter the $3,000 offer of Johns Hopkins. Let me quote from Wheeler’s biography.
“So great has been the influence of these results on our civilization that to many they would seem to comprehend the most important of Gibbs’ achievements in thermodynamics. It is true that the developments outlined above are those which most affected our mode of living, and their monuments – our concrete highways, our purer and cheaper materials, and the lighter, stronger structures and tools which have resulted in so many of our “modern improvements” – are easily perceived by all. But in the final analysis the greater achievement was in the methods of thought applicable to all problems of equilibrium, which we owe to Gibbs. These are the heritage of greatest value to the race which Gibbs has left. And their results in the explanations they afford of the phenomena of phase equilibrium, of electrolytic processes, of surface tension and capillary, of solution, of catalytic action, of gaseous mixtures and diffusion as well as the insight they give into the problems of the molecular constitution of bodies, are monuments more enduring than concrete or alloy steels.”
Matters of the mind matter.
Story 4: Anne Sullivan
If the previous account lacked dramatic impact, the story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller is the stuff from which drama is made. From the cover of The Miracle Worker: “The Miracle Worker is the drama of a girl and a child who together created one of the great stories of the world.” The story begins in darkness and silence – a darkness and silence we can never really comprehend. Have you ever imagined yourself living in such a world? Can you sense the frustration and anguish that must have filled the soul of the young girl as she began to cope with the world on a new set of terms? The awakening and nurturing of the remarkable mind of Helen Keller in the face of seemingly overwhelming obstacles was a labor of love, of intellect, or intuition, and of perseverance throughout the adult life of Anne Sullivan.
Anne Sullivan was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, about the time Willard Gibbs received his Ph.D. As a child she almost lost her sight and entered the Perkins Institution in Boston when she was 14. Her sight was partially restored, and in 1886 she graduated from the Institution. As this time Helen Keller was six years old, living with her family in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and terrorizing the household with her ceaseless activity and outbursts of temper. Her father’s request for a teacher came to the Perkins Institution in August, 1886, when Anne Sullivan was ready for a job.
The story, I think, is best told in her own words. All I could do otherwise at this point would be to paraphrase her.
March 6, 1887
Captain Keller met us in the yard and gave me a cheery welcome and a hearty handshake. My first question was, “Where is Helen?” I tried with all my might to control the eagerness that made me tremble so that I could hardly walk. As we approached the house I saw a child standing in the doorway, and Captain Keller said, “There she is. She has known all day that some one was expected, and she has been wild ever since her mother went to the station for you.” I had scarcely put my foot on the steps, when she rushed toward me with such force that she would have thrown me backward if Captain Keller had not been behind me.
Somehow I had expected to see a pale, delicate child – I suppose I got the idea from Dr. Howe’s description of Laura Bridgman when she came to the Institution. But there’s nothing pale or delicate about Helen. She is large, strong, and ruddy, and as unrestrained in her movements as a young colt. She has none of those nervous habits that are so noticeable and so distressing in blind children. Her body is well formed and vigorous, and Mrs. Keller says she has bot been ill a day since the illness that deprived her of her sight and hearing. She has a fine head, and it is set on her shoulders just right. Her face is hard to describe. It is intelligent, but lacks mobility, or soul, or something. Her mouth is large and finely shaped. You see at a glance that she is blind. One eye is larger than the other, and protrudes noticeably. She rarely smiles; indeed, I have seen her smile only once or twice since I came. She is unresponsive and even impatient of caresses from anyone except her mother. She is very quick-tempered and willful, and nobody, except her brother James, has attempted to control her. The greatest problem I shall have to solve is how to discipline and control her without breaking her spirit.
April 5, 1887
I must write you a line this morning because something very important has happened. Helen has taken the second great step in her education. She has learned that everything has a name, and that the manual alphabet is the key to everything she wants to know.
We went out to the pump-house, and I made Helen hold her mug under the spout while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth, filling the mug, I spelled “w-a-t-e-r” in Helen’s free hand. The word coming so close upon the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came into her face. She spelled “water” several times. Then she dropped on the ground and asked for its name and pointed to the pump and the trellis, and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled “Teacher.” Just then the nurse brought Helen’s little sister into the pump-house, and Helen spelled “baby” and pointed to the nurse. All the way back to the house she was highly excited, and learned the name of every object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty new words to her vocabulary.
May 22, 1887
My work grows more absorbing and interesting every day. Helen is a wonderful child, so spontaneous and eager to learn. She knows about 300 words now and a great many common idioms, and it is not three months yet since she learned her first word. It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine; and moreover, it is given me to rouse and guide this bright intelligence.
If only I were better fitted for the great task! I feel every day more and more inadequate. My mind is full of ideas; but I cannot get them into working shape. You see, my mind is undisciplined, full of skips and jumps, and here and there a lot of things huddled together in dark corners. How I long to put it in order! Oh, if only there was some one to help me! I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know that the education of this child will be the distinguishing even of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.
January 9, 1888
The report came last night. I appreciate the kind things Mr. Anagnos has said about Helen and me; but his extravagant way of saying them rubs me the wrong way. The simple facts would be so much more convincing! Why, for instance, does he take the trouble to ascribe motives to me that I never dreamed of? You know, and he knows, and I know, that my motive in coming here was not in any sense philanthropic. How ridiculous it is to say I had drunk so copiously of the noble spirit of Dr. Howe that I was fired with the desire to rescue from darkness and obscurity the little Alabamian! I came here simply because circumstances made it necessary for me to earn my living, and I seized upon the first opportunity that offered itself, although I did not suspect, nor did he, that I had any special fitness for the work.
I wish there were time to tell you more. You should hear of the joy of discovering a big and wonderful world, of the accomplishments and the recognition. If you have not read this story, you should do so one of these long winter evenings. It is easier to read than many novels. What really matters in this story is that a life, a mind, a spirit was saved by the dedication of one woman to a single task.
Story 5: Charles Anthony Arrington
The last story I want to tell you is both easy and extremely difficult for me. It is a story that I know as well as my own and at the same time a story flawed by lack of objectivity. It is a story of my father about whom no biography will ever be written, and yet it is a story which has in large part determined for me those things which really matter. Each of you could tell a similar story because what really matters is so often primarily determined by personal experiences.
At this point my purposes could better be accomplished if we had the opportunity to spend a long evening together in a small group sharing our individual experiences, but unfortunately such an opportunity is not ours. So within the constraints imposed by this formal and somewhat impersonal setting I will attempt to provide for you a portrait of a remarkable individual who pointed out for me the essence of those things which matter.
In the last weeks of his life my father recorded on cassette tape the highlights of his own history so that his children, most especially his grandchildren and, who knows, perhaps even his great-grandchildren would come to know and understand part of their heritage. A sense of history and belonging was very important to him. It is clear from his account that a sense of place was also important to him. He devoted much of his account to his early years in Kirksey, the rural community between Greenwood and Edgefield where he was born and grew up. Throughout my childhood I heard wonderful stores of hunting, fishing, fighting and burning down cotton gins in Kirksey. Life in that out-of-the-way place in the lost time between real history and now was rich and full of those experiences which make happy memories to be stored up for passing on to children so that they will know what really matters – memories which come flooding back as one faces the end of life and looks back to see that it was good.
There was never any question about where to go to college – he went to Clemson, lived in the barracks, ate in the mess hall, and majored in civil engineering. During the two years that he worked with the TVA he felt so strongly the call to the ministry that in the midst of the great depression he left his job and entered “the seminary.” For him there was only one seminary – Louisville. During the next three years he struggled with Greek, Hebrew, Hermeneutics and loved every minute. He pastored small churches in Kentucky and courted – mainly by correspondence, but successfully – Ottie Ward, a beautiful and intelligent schoolteacher from his new hometown of Ninety-Six. They were married after he went to his first pastorate in Weeksville, North Carolina, and ten months later I was born. I felt a little guilty appearing on the science so quickly, but I wanted to get on with living and they didn’t seem to mind too much my complicating their lives – after all there were eager grandparents waiting for someone they could spoil.
I will relate only one of the memorable events of those years among the cabbages, potatoes and wide, ark rivers which they have told us about. Mr. Jamie was a tight-fisted, hard-hearted, covetous old sinner in the community, and Daddy thought he would benefit from hearing “A Christmas Carol.” With much misgiving the young parson and his wife invited Mr. Josie and Mrs. Molly to supper for waffles, planning afterwards to read to them Dickens’ story. They realized full well that they might so offend Mr. Josie that they would lose all hope of rehabilitating but considered the risk worth taking in view of the gravity of his situation.
After dinner Mr. Jamie was given the best (the only) arm chair, and Mother began to read, afraid to look up from the pages of the book.
“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret. And self-contained, and solitary as an oyster! The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed noise, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gain; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him, he iced his office in the dog days, and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.”
From the corner of her eye she could see Ms. Maggie sitting on the edge of her seat, smiling and nodding in agreement with everything she read. In the midst of the dramatic appearance of Marley’s ghost in Scrooge’s darkened bedchamber Mr. Josie let out a loud and disruptive snore. He had not lasted beyond the first paragraph and had missed the whole story. The guests had a wonderful evening and thanked the young parson and his wife. As for Mother and Father, they learned something themselves that evening about being shepherds of a flock that contains all types of sheep.
The War ended the ministry among the farmers in Weeksville. On the day my brother was born Daddy received papers confirming his enlistment in the Army as a Chaplain. Some of the first real memories I have of my father are the photoreduced, censored letters he sent home to us in Ninety-Six as we followed his progress across Normandy, France, Belgium and Germany. He saw with his own eyes the emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood in the concentration camps and brought back pictures of these scenes which are still in our family albums. He went illegally beyond the U.S. lines at the end of the war into Prague, where he made friends and felt their joy of freedom before the Soviet Army took control.
In later years he often spoke of the importance of the religious dimension of life for men who daily faced death in battle. He wrote many letters to folks back home telling them that a brave son or husband had been killed in battle and offering consolation for their loss. He rightly felt that the chaplaincy was one of his most important ministries. For this reason the family asked that at his funeral the casket be covered with the American flag. I think that both he and the flag were honored by this act.
Now I can speak directly from my own memory of the years we spent in Due West, where Daddy was pastor of the Baptist Church for eleven years. My own childhood in Due West was similar in many ways I suppose to Daddy’s in Kirksey. They were certainly happy years filled with simple but significant pleasures, and my own children for some reason seem to like to hear stories about when I was a little boy and lived in Due West. There are not many towns in South Carolina where a Baptist could grow up with an inferiority complex as a member of a minority religious sect, but Due West was such a place. The ARP’s and Erskine College were the dominant cultural, religious, intellectual and social influence. This environment was one in which my father thrived and in which all four of us children grew up with an opportunity to learn what really matters. I know that such lessons are learned as well in a large city, but somehow my own prejudice lies in the direction of the small town as the best place for a child to grow up.
The people that Daddy ministered to were for the most part merchants, mill workers, school teachers and farmers – provincial, hard-working, usually honest. I don’t recall that any of the college faculty were members of the Baptist Church, but there developed a warm, important relationship between my father and the personnel of the college. Felix Bauer, a Jewish artist and musician who ha fled from Austria at the beginning of the War, was on the faculty and played the organ at our church after Daddy persuaded a few skeptics that God would still be present in the service even though non-Christian fingers produced the music.
Routine church work – organization, preaching, visiting and living with the people – took up much of Daddy’s time. He was not a great preacher, like Carlyle Marney or L.D. Johnson ,but he was effective at leading his flock, and he was a good storyteller. Many of his most effective points were made during the message to the children, when he could catch the adults with their guard down. After a while it because fashionable for the Erskine students to attend the Sunday evening service in our church, and the sanctuary would be filled to capacity for that service. Daddy said it was because the Baptist Church was farther from the women’s dorms and provided a chance for a longer walk home from church in the evening. But I think it was partly Daddy’s sermons, the hearty singing, the cozy atmosphere of the small church and the social hour held after church in our house next door. Sunday evening after the house was emptied by the students going back to the dorms when I had to face my undone homework was always a sad, empty time for me.
Of course, we always had prayer meeting on Wednesday night and the midweek bath. The devotional thoughts at prayer meeting were simple, quiet and direct. Daddy often worked through Paul’s epistles, trying to interpret them to the faithful who came out to pray for rain or a sick relative or for the missionaries-on-the-home-and-foreign-fields. He introduced them to C.S. Lewis, Paul Tillich and Rheinhold Neibuhr, and they learned that God speaks in many ways and does not always use Thee and Thou and verb forms that end in “st.” It mattered to him that the people become educated and that he himself continued being educated. He took courses at Erskine – I especially remember his enjoyment in the course of South Carolina history taught by Professor Lesesne, who later became President of Erskine and also became a special and long-time friend of our family.
Daddy’s education continued in a year spent at Union Seminary in New York, where we lived in converted Army barracks on $90 per month provided by the GI bill. There Daddy learned from Niebuhr, Tillich, Douglas, Steer and others on the faculty and broadened the cultural and intellectual horizons of his family and anyone else he could persuade to undertake the long and arduous drive from South Carolina to New York. For him education was never confined to the library or the classroom.
Three special aspects of those years in Due West are worth mentioning – the Due West Weekly, the vacation trips, and the Latvian families. More than a few hours of my youth were spent turning the crank of an old mimeograph machine producing the Due West Weekly. Daddy felt the community needed some journalistic medium to bring the people together and help them learn about one another. The “Weekly,” delivered without charge to every resident in the town and supported by advertisements and slave labor, was for several years a vital part of the community I wish there were time to read to you excerpts from the editorials, “Our Neighbors,” the “Shirt Plant News,” the school page or Margaret Gilmore’s column. A rich account of the life, loves, joys and sorrows of a small town is stored in the bound copies of the Due West Weekly in the Erskine College Library. During the last Thanksgiving we spent with Daddy my brother John went to Due West and was allowed to check out those bound copies. Reading through those old, amateurish newspapers, laughing and reminiscing was one of the important, meaningful activities that helped us in those days.
Daddy was a nut for travel. We don’t know when this compulsion developed, but I rather think it was genetic, though certainly not from his father. Many of the members of the church had never been beyond the upper-state and some had never left Abbeville county. To Daddy this was a situation worse than drink, playing cards or other forms of backsliding, and he took it upon himself to correct the error of their ways. The only time people could get off was during the Fourth of July vacation week when the mills closed and farming was sort of slack. He began with trips to Charleston – in those days a full day’s drive away. At the end of a long day’s drive in a crowded Chevrolet Mr. Jim Fleming stood and looked at the ocean for the first time and said, “Well it is big, but it ain’t as big as I thought it was gonna be.” His horizon had expanded and his life was enriched. More adventuresome were two trips to New York City. The stories that were brought back telling of the close encounters of the third kind between three carloads of Abbeville County’s staunchest and bravest citizens and The Big Apple thrilled those of us who were left behind, left us in stitches and provided more entertainment than a whole season of game shows and situation comedies. And for the people who went the experience was worth more than six months of Training Union and three study courses put together, I’m sure.
Daddy was concerned about the plight of the displaced persons then living in refugee camps in Europe and decided to do something about it. He arranged for our church to sponsor a family and found a job for the husband in the Anderson hospital. First the Freimanis family came, was greeted, showered, fussed over and settled in. Then came a grandmother, a great-grandmother and an aunt’s family, the Puduls. I remember Juris Puduls in his short pants and knee socks marching onto the stage of the school auditorium during the shower that was given for the family, clicking his heels, bowing and reciting, “Rain, rain go away. Come again another day. Little Johnny wants to play.” - The only English words he knew when he came to his new home. They worked hard, learned our strange ways, and taught us much. One friendly neighbor took a mess of turnip greens to Mrs. Puduls, who thanked her profusely and said, “I am sorry, but we have not a cow.” Eventually they all decided to move to Canton, Ohio, where there was a community of Latvian people who could provide nurture and support for them that all our best intentions and efforts failed to provide.
On Christmas Eve this year, a warm, sunny day in Washington, we went to the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall and found chiseled in black marble on panel 8-E the name JURIS PUDULS. Juris had left his pre-med. studies at college after his sophomore year and volunteered to serve his adopted county as a medic. His parents told Mother and Father how proud they were of his decision, and his death was to them a devastating blow. Did it matter that he lived for a few years in freedom before dying?
The traveling urge hit Daddy again in 1953 and by 1954 he had arranged a pulpit exchange for a year with a Baptist minister in Weymouth, England. Once again I could spend hours telling you of the experiences of that year – how my father rode the bicycle all over the town of 30,000 having tea with almost every family in the church, how he preached in a pulpit robe for the first time, but with an overcoat on underneath to ward off the cold of the English winter, how he preached a sermon broadcast by the BBC and had the entire church in a fever pitch of excitement for a month. He served and loved the people, and they came to love him so that when their own minister decided to stay in the states, they asked him to stay on with them –an offer he reluctantly declined.
When I finished high school and came to Furman, my father accepted a call to the Clemson Baptist Church. The family moved to Clemson, and Daddy served the church and people there for fifteen years in different ways from his service in Due West but with equal effectiveness. I don’t know as much about that ministry since I did not live there. I do know that Daddy loved the Tigers, and only when Clemson played Furman was his support less than anything expected of a loyal IPTAY member. He wanted Furman to play a good, close game with Clemson just barely pulling out a victory at the end of the game. Going to Clemson for him was going home, and only his irrepressible love of adventure was able to get him to leave.
In 1971 he left the church in Clemson and began six years of service with the Foreign Mission Board as an associate missionary – serving Beirut, Athens, and Jedda, Saudi Arabia. He visited in PLO refugee camps, danced in the taverns of the Plaka, christened babies in Saudi Arabia, baptized people in the Mediterranean and almost bargained his wife away for 40 camels with a Bedouin in Yemen. The people he and mother touched and the lives they enriched are indicated by the flood of Christmas cards that arrives from around the world every year. His ministry was his adventure, and blessing the lives of those around him was what really mattered.
I am not able to tell you the end of this story. More than one grown man wept freely by his bedside during the last weeks of his life. I cried like a child with heavy sobs when I embraced him as I was feeding him Jello one cold, lonely December evening. These were not tears of joy. Far from it – they were tears of overwhelming sorrow. And yet that moment mattered as few moments in my life ever have. I suspect you understand why it mattered although I could never describe in a rational way why an experience should matter.
The story I have told you is not unique. I said earlier that each of you could tell a similar story of someone who touched your life and made a difference. The point of all these stories is something I cannot quantify, analyze or even describe rationally. But I hope you understand the point –
Francis of Assisi mattered. Roger Williams mattered. Josiah Willard Gibbs mattered.
Anne Sullivan mattered. Charles Arrington mattered. L.D. Johnson mattered. Marion Johnson matters. Ottie Arrington matters.
And paradoxically the most difficult and yet the easiest assertion . . . Tony Arrington matters.
I want to end this address by changing the title. I have talked about “Who Really Matters” rather than “What Really Matters.”