Taking as his theme “handing one
another along,” author and psychiatrist Robert Coles
thrilled a Founders Day audience with his wide-ranging
and spontaneous remarks about character.
Coles is the eminent teacher and
researcher of psychiatry whose numerous writings include
the five-volume Children of Crisis. Winner of a Pulitzer
Prize and the Medal of Freedom, he was awarded an
honorary doctor of humane letters degree by the College.
In his introduction of Coles, President Roger Hull
described him as a physician who teaches college
literature, a psychiatrist who rejects much of the
language of the field, and an academic who volunteers in
ghetto schools.
Also honored during the Founders Day
convocation were three secondary school teachers whose
work had special impact on Union students (see separate
story). It was this part of the convocation that inspired
Coles.
“I have never seen such a
ceremony, and I am glad to be here to witness what ought
to take place at all college campuses,” he said.
“I remember Walker Percy's novel,
The Moviegoer, in which, at the end, he talks about
'handing one another along.' This is what we witnessed
today.
“What we do in this world as
parents, as teachers, as human beings, in families of all
kinds — and this college is a family, too — is to hand
one another along,” he continued. “To bring
teachers back on behalf of their students is a remarkable
moment.”
Coles then told two remarkable stories
of “handing along.” Both, he said, “showed
us what it means to be free and decent and willing to
bear the burden for the larger good.” And both had
an influence on his writing style, which lets the people
he talks with tell their own stories in their own words.
One story involved a twelve-year-old
boy in Boston who was in an iron lung. When the boy said
he was worried, Coles reassured him — the
“gratuitous reassurance of the doctor,” as he
called it.
“But he said you don't know what
I'm worried about,” Coles said. “He was worried
about his brother, who would have to take his place in
the family. He was an athlete, and his brother wasn't,
and he was worried how his father would treat his
brother.
“Talk about being one's brother's
keeper.”
The second story involved Ruby Bridges,
whom Coles met when he was in New Orleans serving in the
Army. One day, Coles saw a mob in front of a school
building, with a little girl being escorted past that mob
by federal marshalls so she could get an education.
“Ruby wound up praying for that
mob,” Coles said. “She did this because she had
an education from her grandmother, who knew how to
remember what had been said in church buildings — words
to do with justice and compassion and moral indignation.
“Today, in our talk show cultural
world, Ruby would be described as being into
denial,” he said. “Well, she was into denial —
denial of malice and meanspiritedness, and into an
affirmation of the generosity of spirit.
“If it weren't for her, I would
have known so much less about human nature than what I
could have learned in schools and hospitals,” he
said.
He concluded by suggesting that the
audience “show a skepticism about knowledge and
intellectuality that is unconnected to the moral
life.”