Another one of my teachers, who have left this mortal world: Dr. Frederick Wilhelmsen, who died in 1996.
I took his undergrad Philosophy of Being class, which everybody in that class called “Phil of Fritz” because nobody called him by his actual first name. It was always Dr. Wilhelmsen or Fritz Wilhelmsen.
Huge auditorium and stadium seating. Wild, “evil genius” hair. He would amble towards the chalkboard and, with no notes, no books, nothing but chalk and his cigarette (which wasn’t allowed, but he blithely ignored the prohibition), he would fill up that huge chalkboard with notes upon notes of about Platonic, Aristotelian, and Scholastic ontology and metaphysics.
Intellectually I was lost lost lost in that class. I had never seen so many C minuses and D-pluses in my entire life. To this day I still believe he gave me a mercy “C”, of which I am eternally grateful. (The only class in which I made even lower grades was a Spanish class taught by his daughter, Alexandra Wilhelmsen, who also gave me a mercy “C.”)
Amazing man, he was.
You also forgot Fr. Placid. I’ve never craved a teacher’s approval as much as his in all my life. His smiles were so beautiful, and so infectious, that I wanted to do well just so I could earn one of of them.
I had Dr. Wilhelmsen for Epistemology, the last semester of my Senior year. I only passed because K. conned a seminarian friend of hers into tutoring me every week. I walked in late for an exam one morning and stared at the board, utterly bewildered, trying to decipher his scrawl. The old man came and sat down next to me, leaned in, and whispered, “Would you like me to read it to you?”
By: eowyn on January 24, 2008
at 11:45 pm
“The old man came and sat down next to me, leaned in, and whispered, ‘Would you like me to read it to you?’”
God, that was so Fritz Wilhelmsen. And you’re right about the scrawl — I think my eyesight degraded, just trying to pick out the words.
I’m sorry that I never had Fr. Placid. Like you, his students remember him fondly.
By: lizardqueen on January 25, 2008
at 11:24 am