The Cathedral of Learning and Lasting Friends: Pittsburgh, PA (Part 14)
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In the summer of 1962, we set out once again to advance my graduate program, headed for the University of Pittsburgh (known informally as “Pitt”) and a second year of fellowship-supported graduate work. We arrived on a sunny day and drove directly to the house of some friends we knew from A.C.C., Gene and Susie Couch. Gene was in physics and went directly to Pitt after he graduated with me from A.C.C. in 1961. They lived in a section of town known as Squirrel Hill, which some of you may recognize as the Jewish neighborhood where the terrible synagogue shooting took place in 2018. We stayed a few nights with them while we looked for a place to live, and we found one in a big house that had been split up into apartments. Parking for our car, though, had to be on the street. This was the first time we had encountered the big city problem of cramped streets and dealing with houses built before there were many cars to be parked. Rental spaces were at a premium, and we had an early run-in with another resident in our house who let us know indignantly when I left our car behind the house after washing it that she had paid for that spot and would thank us not to usurp it again. Happily for us, we could walk to the University and could leave our car parked on the street, although not always close to our house.
Early in our stay in Pittsburgh, we met people who were to become long-term— in some instances lifelong—friends. Some were fellow members of the church we attended, the 5th and Beechwood Church of Christ, and others were fellow graduate students. Among the lifelong friends were Wendell and Joyce Bean and Ben and Neda Riley at church and Bob and Nancy Mossman from the graduate school. Others we were close to when we were in Pittsburgh and were in touch with for many years afterward were the Couches from church and Keith and Wendy Ratliffe from Pitt, whom we came to know through the Couches; Keith was in the physics program along with Gene. Ben Riley was also in physics, but he attended another major university in Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon. Apart from church social functions, the most significant group activity we engaged in during our stay in Pittsburgh was going to the Metropolitan Opera when it came on tour to Pittsburgh. This group consisted of the Higgses, the Beans, the Ratliffes, and the Mossmans. It was Laquita’s and my first exposure to classical opera, and it was one of the most lasting cultural experiences of our lives. We heard live such stars as Birgit Nillson and Richard Tucker, and we have never forgotten it.
After getting settled in, I went to the University’s main building, a 37-story skyscraper built in a Gothic style which led to its being called the Cathedral of Learning. It was several miles from downtown Pittsburgh and a whole neighborhood had built up around it. I went to the English Department area on one of the upper floors to meet with my advisor, Dr. Alan Markman, a medievalist. He was a pipe-smoking U.S. Marine veteran who often referred to his military experience. We were not temperamentally matched, and he turned out to be rather gruff in his assessment of my work. He trashed the first major paper I turned in to him and complained that it took him over two hours to get through it and make his comments. His note on the front of the paper said something about its being one of the worst graduate papers he had ever read, flawed as it was by infelicitous phrasing, errors in usage, poor scholarship, and pretentious frippery. I was absolutely crushed, of course, but I went carefully over his remarks and in my next paper tried to avoid the kinds of mistakes he had pointed out. It was a real shock treatment, but it made me a better writer. Actually, I think it was already on his agenda before he received the paper to take me down a peg or two, because he commented at some point that my being a hot-shot undergraduate at Abilene Christian College didn’t mean that I was anything special as a graduate student.
One of the first basic classes in Pitt’s graduate English program was a two-semester course in Old English, that is, the language in which Beowulf, the earliest English classic, was written. It was equivalent to learning a foreign language, since Old English is a linguistic cousin of modern German. We had to learn the basic grammar and vocabulary of the language, and upon completing that we were assigned a certain section of Beowulf to translate for each class period. Three classmates and I decided to split up the assignments between us to make the task easier. We would meet together in a study area between classes and share with each other the translation of the section we had done. It was not a total avoidance of responsibility for the assignments, for we had to be ready to translate in class, but it did give us something of an advantage over the rest of the class, and one of them squealed on us to Dr. Markman. One day, he called the four of us in and gave us a busy-work assignment in bibliography in the library, so we got our come-uppance. This joint endeavor nevertheless established a friendship between us that lasted through our graduate years. One of the group was Bob Mossman, who remains a special friend to this day. The other two were Joyce Measures and Tom Calhoun, both of whom were interesting personalities. We called ourselves a comitatus, which is the Old English word for warrior group.
Bob Mossman and I struck up our friendship because our initial conversation revealed that until recently he had been intending to go into Christian ministry. He did his undergraduate work at Whitworth College in eastern Washington, a small Christian liberal arts college. He was from California and was very much a part of that culture, so it was a bit anomalous that he should have become a zealous convert in his youth to evangelical Christianity. He was very active in student leadership at Whitworth, but toward the end of his work there, there was some kind of breakdown in personal relationships that embittered him and turned him away from Christian life. When I met him at Pitt, he said that he just couldn’t see himself limited by Christian ministry, which he described pithily as, “patting little old ladies on the head.” So he turned from divinity to English literature. He was interested in my Christian background and commitment, and we soon were engaging in debates about matters of faith. He had become a thoroughgoing atheist and considered my faith to be naïve and uninformed. Nevertheless, we became fast friends, and Laquita and I soon began getting together socially with him and his wife, Nancy, who, though chagrined at Bob’s forsaking the faith, nevertheless supported him in his new career plans. Our association continued for many years, until the two of them were divorced. We are still in touch with Bob a few times a year and have kept up with each other’s lives.
The other two members of our comitatus were also unconcerned with religion, but they were curious enough about my Christian practice that they and Bob were persuaded to accept my invitation to attend church with Laquita and me. I don’t remember precisely the conversation that ensued from that visit, but they were struck by our a capella singing and felt welcomed by the group. Their curiosity satisfied, none of them were interested in returning. Joyce and I had a little falling out because I teased her one time about smoking more because it looked fashionable than because she really liked it. She sat me down in private and told me something of her dysfunctional background as a way of correcting what she thought was my superficial understanding of her. I was suitably chastened, but I was never close to her. Tom had done his undergraduate work at Princeton and was very much a man of the world and a part of urbane New York culture. He was an enthusiastic recontour and regaled us with tales of his boozing days at Princeton.
There is much more to tell of our days in Pittsburgh, including Laquita’s job and academic work, our life with the church, our other residences, and memorable classes and professors.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. Recently, Dr. Higgs has published some of his poetry and a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, The Icahbod Letters. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)
