Author: Peter Sipe

Mary Moon Wilson

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“Well, why don’t we take in some of these girls and see if we can’t give them a better home and turn them around.”

 

Mary Moon Wilson founded and ran two group homes in Boston: one for runaway teenage girls, the other for mentally challenged adults.

According to her Boston Globe obituary, she “rescued and raised maybe 1,000 children.” One of them – using a literary device we learn, understatement – said: “They don’t make too many folks like Mary Wilson.”

The obituary offers the vocabulary commendation, maternal, and haven. And savvy, too, which Ms. Wilson demonstrates here:

She was able to get employment at the Pentagon as a cryptographer by inflating her resume, saying she was able to speak several different languages (knowing only the English language) but the interviewer did not ask her to speak any of the languages she claimed to know and eventually got the job.

 

Harry Parker

Trireme

 

Like Rockne and Wooden, he became legendary in his sport and something of a cult figure on campus.

 

He coached rowing at Harvard for over half a century. He had twenty-two unbeaten seasons, as well as multiple national titles and Olympic medals. Quite reasonably, Harry Parker’s New York Times obituary uses terms like “unparalleled” and “unrivaled success.”

Highlights of reading Coach Parker’s obituary in class included seeing our vocabulary word venerable for the second week in a row, and trying to ascertain what it takes to qualify as a cult figure.

 

Adolphous Bullock

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Last Friday we read the obituary of Adolphous Bullock, the inspiration for Passed Made Present. Normally I have students list reasons the subject of an obituary merits one, but in this case, I tried something different.

Since we’re reading The Adventures of Ulysses, I asked them to explain what Mr. Bullock and Ulysses had in common. They both went to war, obviously; everyone got that. Many students said that both were venerable (much as I’d like to tell you this is how we go around talking, it’s one of our vocabulary words). Others noted that they both led by example, which is one of “Ulysses’ Rules.”*

One word we learned in Mr. Bullock’s obituary was mentor. Mentor was the name of the man who looked after Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, during the Trojan War.

 

*along with: Never anger a god; play chess, not checkers; mortals can’t change their fates; don’t have too much pride. (This plays off a rule list from Bud, Not Buddy, which they read last year. I’d say it’s a decent enough list for modern life, too.)

 

Phyllis Jen

Yesterday we read the obituary of Phyllis Jen, a beloved family doctor who trained hundreds of future family doctors. She was also renowned for treating all of her patients with skill and warmth.

Given what we learned of her, I expect she wouldn’t mind at all that we had a bit of fun reading her obituary. It mentioned a sabbatical, which got us all talking about what we’d do if we could take sabbaticals. (Warm locations were prevalent among locales proposed, perhaps because snowdrifts are approaching students’ heights.)

Family doctors acquire an astonishing amount of knowledge, and work unbelievably hard to do so. To Dr. Jen and family doctors everywhere: Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

[Image credit: Heart normal anterior exterior anatomy, Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator]