A Fine Career

FRI., AUG. 21, 1998, 6:45 AM
FARM, STUDY

Emeritus has been your status for almost a year, now. Next week classes begin once again, and though you miss getting to know individual students you have little yearning for a “full load” and all of that responsibility. You calculate that it now is 50 years since you first met 7th graders in a Bishop Hall classroom and eager, unexperienced boys on the football field… a half century.

It was decided… and your soul was part of the decision… before you came into the earth as Bob Russell that your career would be education… but with no details as to what your field would be or where you would teach. You, as a boy, wanted to be an athlete. You had the spirit for it, more so than the size and skills. Yet you did have some success, and that led you to want a career in coaching. (Remember also that World War II and your “role” as a Navy student gave you some advantages… more chance for success in competing.)

There was a “kind of destiny” for you to meet and marry Lenore, and that had to be worked out. You also had some “destiny” to experience the Oriental and Polynesian culture of Hawaii, and so all of these “destinies” came together in Ken Kiefer’s apartment… meeting John Fox and accepting the job he offered you. Thus you were to have your coaching opportunities but also experiences in the classroom, where your career would truly be. It was to be in Hawaii, and there you and Lenore would meet and eventually fall in love.

You fulfilled your yearning to be a coach, with enough success… yet not enough to have you continue in that type of educational career. Without any clear goal (other than to continue in teaching) you went to Stanford and earned your doctorate in “quick time”, and soon were back at Punahou again, for different educating experiences. This was good for your career, and it allowed your sister, Joanne, to visit and begin her life there in Hawaii… which gives you, now, the opportunity to return and enjoy that place and culture, from time to time.

It also allowed the time for the position of Assistant Professor to open at Stanford, for you to be notified, to express interest, and to be selected. So you went from one desirable setting to another, and also gave you the chance to “settle in” as a Presbyterian, which was also “in the plan”. You have wondered, occasionally, whether you eventually would have been comfortable as a Stanford professor, but you accepted, as you should have, that this was not to be your place for a life-long career.

It came time to move, and the position here at S.I.U. was “conveniently” open. It was right for you, and you were right for this Department. You were now the father of five sons, and it often seemed “too many” for the time and capacities you had as a father. You are generally proud of them now, but not as proud of yourself as a parent. You did decide, with the various pressures you were feeling, not to be active in professional organizations… or civic. I pushed for such a decision, but it was mostly yours… and a good one.

Your career truly developed here, and you did reintroduce the spiritual dimension to health in the last years of teaching. It could have come a bit earlier, but when you did begin to affirm this dimension you did it with confidence, skill, and from a status position that you had earned.