I can't let this day end without adding to this blog a note in memory of my uncle, Henry C. Lindsey. He was born today in 1918.I didn't appreciate my father's older brother and what he meant to my life sufficiently during his lifetime. My mother preferred her family to my father's, and exerted much influence on her husband and children, in determining which members of what family they would see at any given time. Though for a good part of his career,my uncle and his family lived near us, we saw these family members only rarely.
There were also sub rosa tensions between my father and his older brother, tensions never fully articulated and somewhat mysterious to me as a child. I suspect they had much to do with the fact that my uncle was what people used to call biddable--a biddable son, who did what his parents expected and made them proud. My father, on the other hand, was the proverbial bad boy, the rebellious son who gave his parents grief by refusing to obey, and who would grow up to inflict similar pain on his wife, by his refusal to be curbed by family obligations he preferred to ignore.
Still, as I grew up and chose academic life as my vocation (or was chosen by that life, might be more accurate), I grew closer to my uncle, who was also an academic. He had earned a doctorate in speech and drama, and spent the initial years of his teaching career in that field, heading speech departments and publishing a number of plays.
Early in his academic career, however, he got tagged for administrative work--just as happened with me. In both of our cases, the tagging had little to do with our wishes or, truth be told, our inclinations and talents. Neither of us had much much interest in the details of administrative work, though, like me, my uncle exerted much effort in trying to attend to them conscientiously. Both of us worked to be organized and detail-oriented, and both paid a price for doing so.
What my uncle had going for him in the area of academic administration was, however, his strong sense of people--his obligation to people, to making their lives better when he was able to do so. As his sister, my father's sister Helen, told me towards the end of her brother's life, he was offered one job after another as an academic vice-president in church-related colleges (a career I found myself pushed into in church-related colleges, as well) because he was simply exceptionally kind, fair-minded, able to get people working together even when faculties were riven by strong divisions. As Aunt Helen told me, her brother had been adored at each institution at which he did administrative work--adored, in particular, by faculty who reported to him.
I saw those character traits always in evidence in the family circle, where my uncle was often patient to a fault, constantly good-humored--and downright humorous, with a playright's ability to turn a phrase, a witty (and sometimes mildly wicked) ability to spot people's foibles and to mock them gently, and a powerful story-telling ability. What I know of the history of my father's side of my family owes much to his interest in collecting family stories and artifacts and passing these on to me. He told me many priceless anecdotes about my great-grandparents that I did not hear from my father, who was less interested in handing on those stories--to me, at least. I would give much for his ability to mimic others, an ability my father and his sister also had.
I very much miss my uncle. He has been on my mind all day, though I did not know today was the anniversary of his birth until I looked at some record that contained that date. I always run across pictures of him or biographical information about him in books I happen to pick up or on the internet with a start. He left more traces of his life than I would have expected as I grew up, since I knew nothing of the details of his varied and successful career as an academic administrator until I was grown and entering on my own academic career.
I often think of the last time I saw my uncle Carlton. (In professional life, he went by the name his wife preferred, Henry; in the family, he was called, as he had been in childhood, Carlton.) That last visit was to the hospital, where he was declining quickly from a form of diabetes that was very aggressive and destructive to his entire body.
His sister Helen was with me. Her brother looked shockingly bad, but neither of us showed our feelings about that--or, I hope at least that I didn't betray what I felt on seeing him in such a state. Though he was having episodes of temporary blindness due to quick small strokes at that time, he was jovial, and even tried to entertain us with funny family stories.
When we left the room, my aunt sat on a bench and cried bitterly. I sat beside her and held her. With her nursing background, she knew that her brother's life was rapidly coming to an end. She said to me as she cried that it was horrible to see him in such a state, because she knew he was suffering in ways he had disguised as we visited him. He was the last member of her immediate family. I feel certain that she also knew that, in facing his death, she was facing that final, obdurate orphanhood of the sole member left of a family in which everyone else had died.
I owe much to my uncle. In my last academic administrative position at Bethune-Cookman University, I proudly kept his picture among the diplomas on the wall behind my desk. I did so to remind me of what the work of an academic vice-president is all about, when it is done right, as he did it: getting people to work together, making people feel valued so that they are able to put their best foot forward, and adhering to the core values and mission of the institution. And making the lives of those he served as an administrator better when one is able to do so . . . .
