For God's Sake, Smedley, Bow Your Head And Have Some Respect!

Listening: A moment of silence.
What's my problem? Good teachers die.


During my time in college, I had two professors that really impacted me. Two professors that to this day, I would still take a course from, despite my lacking use for college academia and classrooms. One is the everlastingly funny Jenny (formerly Jim) Boylan who I had the luxury of having for two semesters of creative writing workshops. The other is the now late, great, Charlie Bassett.

I learned of Charles Bassett's passing a couple of days after I left the island. With all of the chaos of getting a visa, packing, and seeing people that I hadn't seen in six months, I hadn't had time to properly memorialize him.

I remember my first day of class with him. The class, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, met in the basement of the library and it was a class that I had been trying to get into for a long time. It was a large classroom with desks arranged in a square with a larger desk at the head of the square closest to the blackboard.

All of us students were there waiting for the legendary Charles Bassett to make his entrance, I found myself wondering what was so good about this professor that everyone, whether they were an English or American Studies major or not, wanted to take his class. Had the college been in a third world country, one would have had to bribe a mid-level beauracrat with a handshake on the sly to get a spot in the class.

Now, enter Charles Bassett.

A stocky man wearing khakis, a khaki sports coat with patches on the elbows, white shirt, and a maroon knit tie, carrying a leather briefcase charged into the room. With haste, he throws his briefcase onto the desk, runs his hand up and down his perrenially red face a couple of times before running it through his mop of white hair and exhaling. Little did I know that this was how every one of his classes began.

From there he launches into his engaging discussion of modern American novelists while calling some by their last names and others the endearing name of "Smedley." His teaching style not only dropped mad amounts of knowledge into the beer-laden brains doing their best to wake up, but entertained in a style that could only be described as vaudeville. Bassett was a true raconteur, spinning insights, drawing in his audience and getting them to add to the story as well.

I have taken a number of Hemingway classes over the course of my educational career, but none were as enlightening or as fun as the one with Bassett. He got excited about concepts and prose and got us all excited too. He got whipped up into such a state where spittle would collect at the corners of his mouth and could occasionally project itself onto some poor, unsuspecting co-ed.

Bassett had a zest or a zeal for life that should be aspired to by anyone, anywhere. You could tell that he had a limited attention span for bullshit and a limitless love for beer. On any given evening you could have found him, not at home, but at the pub hanging out with his beloved students and the students who loved him as well.

He had infinite patience for the earnest (and the Ernest), having all of the time in the world for a student who needed help with, not only his class, but with the classes of his colleagues.

When I think of Charlie Bassett, I think of the type of educator that every educator should strive to be, and every student should have the opportunity to learn from. If everyone was as passionate about their chosen profession as Bassett was, the world would be a better place. People would accel in their fields and would raise the level of intellect and imagination of the world as a whole. Unfortunately, not every professor is like Bassett, and not everyone chases the dragon like he does.

So, those who were lucky enough to be in his jovial presence, and who were insightful enough to look past the lessons of the class and see the lessons of the man, it's now our obligation to carry his spirit with us. It's up to us now to live with the zeal that he did. It's our job to pass on the enthusiasm. It's up to us to try to be the next Charles Bassett, although it's a tough order to live up to that, whether we do it in the classroom or out in the world.

So, to Charles Bassett, I raise a pint... or two. I can only hope and aspire to live with the passion, the compassion and the insightfulness that he did.