Originally published at c h a n g s p a c e. Please leave any comments there.
When I arrived at Emerson College in the fall of 1990 I was a wet-behind-the-ears, entitled and privileged white boy with no idea of the world around me.
When I graduated from Emerson in 1993 I was still a privileged white boy but a little wiser about my place in the world and how it had gotten that way.
That was all because of one man: Rev. John Coffee.
—
I don’t remember if I was told to take a class with him by my advisor or anyone, but the general word around campus was that if you were at Emerson you shouldn’t graduate without taking at least one of his classes. By my senior year I’d taken six and the final semester of 1993 I was taking two at once.
The thing I loved about John (it’s hard for me to call him that because for so long he was Dr. Coffee or Rev. Coffee until I had graduated and then he asked me to call him John) was that he got me. He saw the naive kid and I suspect took a certain liking to me. But then he may have done that with everyone. I used to sit right in the front row so I wouldn’t fall asleep (honestly) and also so I could record lectures for transcribing later (I still have some tapes of these that I may dig up and put online). He approached me once and asked what I was doing and I told him and he just smiled. He either thought I was young and earnest or just amused at someone taking so much care with his words.
But his lectures − my god! The man spoke beautifully and eloquently and really entertained you and along the way if you weren’t careful you learned more than you thought. I loved to hear his description and back stories and untold anecdotes. When he spoke it was as if he had been there and was describing events from memory having witnessed it in his tweed jacket, tie, brown loafers and yellow oxford shirt. His stories gave me a whole new outlook on everything from God to the Bible to the Constitution to the second World War and beyond.
As I sat there in the front row – for every day of every class I took with him – I got to notice a few things over the years. His notes – I’d kill to get my hands on those even more than the Dead Sea Scrolls or anything else – were neatly typed then scrawled over with his peculiar script. I grew to recognize a few lectures re-used from other classes but I didn’t care. He was always fun to listen to, I learned from him and always left his classes thinking.
He had a few rules for his students. If you were there you were quiet and listened. He took attendance the old school way by name. If you made every class you didn’t have to take the final exam (I used this option every class of his I took. I think I only took two exams of the six classes I had with him. He even let me off when I missed class due to my dorm room being flooded). He was strict about that and I wasn’t angry when he said you missed such and such a day because we both knew he was right.
His exams were essays but also had spelling quizzes. I’m ashamed to admit how I got certain words wrong twice but to this day I thank him every time I have to spell accommodate.
He did assign papers and he was fine with the use of foul language which at 21 I found awesome but now look back and find a bit childish. John Coffee was more interested in getting you to express your real self than just spit back something from the textbook like other teachers might have you do (he didn’t use textbooks. I loved that).
—
After graduation I’d see him every so often and would get very shy because he was like a god to me. I mean, this is a guy who so impressed Stephen King that he wrote a character after him! And when it came time to get married I could think of only one man for the job. John agreed and invited us to his apartment to discuss the particulars.
This had always been a dream of mine since the first day I met him. I imagined he lived in an old Victorian in Brookline with polished wood everywhere and a library rivaling that of the Vatican (but far more catholic in its contents). Some of my friends had been his assistants for work study including my good friend Steve. John loved Steve as many did for the way he excelled despite coming up from a rough background and his sharp mind (many thought John was gay which made him chuckle and was perhaps the reason he assigned the word catamite so often for his spelling quizzes. But he was not gay. There was a woman and she was dear but there was only the one). Steve described it as much the way I thought it would be. Lots of books and tidy but cluttered in the way a scholar’s home should be.
When we met with him at his apartment I felt I was being let in behind the curtain by Oz himself. He lived in a modern building but a very nice one. His study had a window overlooking the southwestern edge of the city and the D line. I was right about the books and there were many. He had enormous stereo speakers (as big as a medium sized refrigerator. No kidding) and a reel-to-real that he played classical music on. He told us all about his father’s time in Congress, his mother’s life and even showed us a picture of her sitting with a lion or a tiger.
I think we talked about the wedding for about fifteen minutes out of the hour we were there. WHen I asked him to come to the rehearsal he emphatically said, “No. I don’t need to.” As it was my wedding I was nervous but when the day came he did not disappoint. He was prompt, ready and performed a ceremony as moving as his best lecture.
Then he got his envelope of cash, shook our hands and was out like a shot in his brown Lincoln Town Car.
——
I told my wife she would have hated me had she met me before college. And the reason was that I had yet to be spoken to and challenged as I was by the words and voice of Rev. John Coffee. He is one of the people who made me the man I am today.
I can’t help but think that wherever he is now, he has a broad smile across his face as he looks around in wonder, adjusts his glasses, clears his throat and cackles with laughter before saying, “So this is what it’s really like!”
Thank you, John. I miss you.
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So what is the appeal of an obsession? The kind I’m talking about doesn’t matter, and that is absolutely key. Sports are an example. Most Americans are viewers, not participants. In the end, which team wins does not change their lives in material ways, though they may care passionately about their team.
happy
