I’m still reading my brother in law’s reminiscence of his first interview with Colonel Persing.  There’s much to ponder there, and I consider it a stimulus package all by itself.  To further the aim of the education of the emotions.

I was an ROTC cadet also, but in less stringent conditions than those of Dick.  One of the things I didn’t mention about his first interview was the pile of books at the Colonel’s feet, and the general impression that this office was more like a library than a bivuoac.  Anyone in the Danville area who knew coach Paul Shebby well enough to be invited to his home knows something about this general impression.  Paul Shebby was as cultivated as any Greek philosopher, and that made a huge impression on me.  Perhaps it was the same with Colonel Persing, but I have my doubts.

Recently my dad had been through a harrowing experience.  According to some, he ran over an elderly woman, breaking her leg.  According to him, this old hag was trying to pull a fast one on him in order to rein in a little mullah.  the courts will decide whose version is the true one.  What I have in mind today is how humbling this experience must be: to have your licence taken away, and having to be lugged around by dutiful women or kind uncles.  I never talk about this very much, but I was a miserable failure as a ROTC cadet.  First of all, there was the problem of the hat part of the uniform.  There was no adequate hat size for my big head (more the head of mongolism than any head of superior intelligence.)  What I was finally issued looked more like a Jewish skull cap than the hat of a second lieutenant.  Each time I would march up to the front of my platoon, the guys would split their guts laughing at the sight of the wayward rabbi shouting out marching orders.  Then there were the real-life exams, with platoons facing off against each other with opposing plans for victory.  I never made it past the proposal to surrender and stay in prison for the duration.

This too was humbling.  I mean, it really was.  My commanding officer must have understood this, and, instead of raving about deductive reasoning, he started a conversation with me about the love there was in the word philosophy, and wanted to know what a philosophy major was doing in the ROTC.  The conversation lasted throughout my  junior year at Notre Dame, and was among the most fruitful relationships I was able to have there.  It’s humbling in a way to see yourself referred to as a lover of wisdom.  There too, people tend to crack up.  But my commanding officer didn’t.  He was interested in who I was.  To my utter surprise.  You can go through a whole college career and never feel considered in the etymological sense of the term: looked at long and hard and non-judgmentally.  It was, as a matter of fact, a process of getting cured from the humbling experiences I had undergone.  Slowly, my confidence returned.  And the laughter continued, but edged with a kind of envy, because I was the guy that had dined with the officer and his family.  In his home outside of South Bend, there was a collection of the great books, and they looked as though they had been read.  All of a sudden, this morning, I realise that in another context, in a battle situation, I would do anything I could to save this man’s life.

The draft was abolished before the beginning of my senior year.  That was the last straw of my resolve to stay with the ROTC on through to a career in clinical psychology.  That’s what tingles in the comments I’m making now about Dick’s article.  It’s important work, clinical psychology.  I maintain that it has nothing to do with deductive judgments, except insofar as clinical psycholgy can devolve into forensic investigation.  That’s another story, which I hope my brother in law will share with us here.

I thank my uncle Tom for taking my Dad around.  There is virtue in simple conversation.  And its instances are few and far between.