Ralph

Looking through a lens

"I don't want you to walk out with answers; I want you to walk out with questions. My job is to make you think."

I scribbled the phrase on the first page of a fresh notebook and sat back slouched in my plastic chair preparing for another fall semester. It was my senior year and college had lost its novel appeal several semesters before - I was ready to be done. The lecture continued:

"In the 1800s humans discovered that a social world exists. Society has a power of it's own. We don't even get here without two other people. The Western aristocracy had the luxury to philosophize all day long about sociological ideas, but they didn't want to do very much about it because they liked being aristocrats. But then Americans got hold of Sociology. Americans destroyed the contemplative class giving rise to a restless spirit - a vacuum to be filled with new ideas and inventions. We started becoming aware of choices and we started becoming individuals."

The teacher towered over the class and I held in a laugh. This guy was huge! How tall could he be? I thought. Six-foot six? Six-foot seven? His formal title was Dr. Brown, but he wasn't big on self-promoting formalities so all his students called him Ralph. His massive Andre-the-Giant hands delicately punched the remote propelling his PowerPoint presentation along and he easily paced the front of the classroom in two long strides. He seemed like Santa Clause, Socrates, and a modern-day Molly Brown all rolled up and squished into the human version of Chewbaca. He spilled ideas into our brains with jolliness, profundity, and a sparkling hint of irreverence and I decided I liked him. But I didn't realize then the significant impact this giant would make on the rest of my life.

"Education is the pursuit of truths, not the defense of truths," Ralph explained in a subsequent lecture, "If you focus on the defense of truth you have damned yourself," He spoke with his words and his hands. Sometimes his hands would expressively swish and swash and sometimes his hands would karate-chop the air when he was making a really important point. "One of the indicators of a highly educated person is their realization of how little they know. Mark Twain penned, 'It is a very unimaginative person who can find only one way to spell a word.' Sociology allows you to see the millions of contradictions we live everyday."

Ralph's lessons were thought-provoking, fun, and uncomfortable. He challenged our ideals and questioned our common-sense reasoning. "George Bernard Shaw argued, 'normal people adapt to society and abnormal people don't, which means that all social change depends on the weirdo.' Zimmel concluded that the role of an artist is to push the envelop and be the misfit. Societies who get rid of the artists become stagnate because no one is driving change. Human beings work with the knowledge they have and they are constantly reinterpreting history. But exegesis is just as important as exposition."

"The search for truth is the human endeavor, not the discovery of truth."

I dashed across the crowed square slapping the concrete with my flip-flops. I jumped up the stairs in three solid bounds, screeched to halt in front of the classroom door, and leaned against a wall heaving like a maniac in an attempt to catch my breath. Late again.

It was nearing the end of the semester and my senioritis had weakened my punctuality. When I finally recovered from the sprint across campus I stood up and peered into door's window waiting for the perfect time to make my tardy entrance. The room was darkened and a projector displayed pictures of students riding elephants and hiking through jungles. I quietly opened the door and found a spot in the back of the room.

"The Southeast Asia Internship is meant to give you chance to learn from another culture and see the world from a new paradigm. Most of you will stay with host families and teach English to young school children," Ralph explained. "We'll have an info session later this week."

Psssh. Yeah right. I wasn't going to Southeast Asia. It was my last summer at BYU and I wasn't married yet! It was my last summer to catch a husband!

Later that day I sat with my classmate and friend, Sabrina Packer. She suddenly turned to me and said, "You have to come with me on that Southeast Asian Internship Ralph talked about today."

"What?" I whined. "You actually want to go?"

"I really, really want to go. How often will we ever get a chance like this? I don't want to look back at my life once I'm married and with kids and wish I had taken advantage of this opportunity. It will be life changing to live in Thailand for three months. You have to do this with me!"

Ralph almost fell out of his seat when he saw Sabrina and I walk in for the internship info session. "He came up to me after the session with a huge smile and said, "I am so excited for you to come with us, George. This is such an incredible opportunity and you're going to love it!"

Haha. Ralph actually thought I was going on this internship. I was just there at Sabrina's persuasive request. There was no way I was actually going to go to Southeast Asia.

Four months later I was half way around the world in Chang Mai, Thailand trying to figure out what the heck I was doing there.

Me in Thailand, what the heck!

I honestly don't know how he did it, but Ralph somehow convinced me to go. The internship was his baby and the enthusiasm that burst from his eyes whenever he talked about the Thai people, the Cambodian temples, or the Laos waterfalls - well, it was just plain compelling and exciting and dang it, Ralph was just so inspiring and attending the internship seemed like the right thing to do. My friend, Sabrina, didn't even end up going, but there I was in Thailand in the company of fellow students with Ralph at our helm - ready for an adventure.

I was reading back through my Thailand blog and found this post:

"The group of students and teachers I am traveling with took a road trip last Wednesday. My professor, Ralph, just arrived in Thailand last Sunday so he came with us and we all drove to Burma together in a big travel van. He is definitely one of my favorite teachers of all time. On our drive we asked Ralph questions about history, philosophy, religion, and current events. Ralph would go into these awesome impromptu philosophical lectures that deepened our thoughts and rattled our beliefs. He’s the kind of teacher who carefully prods you to reach inside yourself and examine the beliefs and cultural ideas you never thought to consider. Lectures like that shake up my intellectual and spiritual insides and force me to evaluate myself. It’s sometimes painful, but I end up understanding myself and my surroundings on a more profound level."

Ralph philosophizing on the way to Burma

One day while slipping and sliding down a natural waterfall in the Chang Mai jungle I sliced my hand on a rock. Blood was everywhere and Ralph decided I needed to get it sewn up. So I hopped on the back of his little moped and we flew down the mountain to the nearest Thai hospital. He checked me in and sat with me while I was stitched up. He told me stories about past Thailand trips and his visits to Jordan and South America, he laughed with the doctor and made friends with all the nurses, and I felt special because he personally assured that my wound was nursed. I still have the scar today and I smile every time I see it and remember the experience.

A gross, but sentimental picture

Southeast Asia introduced me to wonderful people, new ideas, and a beautiful culture. I left with a deep desire to better the world around me. Before I came home from the internship I wrote, 

"At times, running away from home may be necessary; it's helped me step back and closely examine myself and where I've come from. But the real challenge, and I guess the whole point of life, is learning to muster the strength and humility required to go back—and not just to go back, but to go back and make it work, to encompass the strengths from both worlds for the purpose of creating a beautiful life, and to do it with the people I love."

Ralph's Soc 429 class and his Southeast Asian internship changed my life forever. 

Back home and standing in my Church's gymnasium before a small gathering of close friends, family and Ralph, I gave a little personal college commencement speech since I was out of the country for my real commencement. 

"Ralph always jokes that we’ll never be able to sit through a casual dinner conversation again after taking sociology classes and he’s right. I will never see the world the same again. And I can only hope to one day achieve the honorable status of being that annoying individual who can’t sit through any conversation, no matter how trivial, without seeing straight through glaring social generalizations that have no basis for reality, and then who has the audacity to point out to the members in the conversation that their argument is based completely on thin air, thin air that has accumulated over time and space and taken on a life of its own and become so reified, or so real, that people actually make it their career to study this thin air, and we call those people…sociologists." And I tipped my hat to my professor.

He then stood at the front as my "keynote" speaker and encouraged me to be a life-long learner and a life-long teacher - always searching for truth and always encouraging others to break through their limits and transform the world around them for the better.

A few years later I wrote Ralph about law school. Did he think it was for me? He wrote back an honest reply explaining that he didn't think it was a good fit and suggested I consider other opportunities. He talked about my strengths and gave some suggestions. His words helped me reevaluate my career ambitions and set the stage for a new direction in my life. I felt grateful to have him as a mentor. I imagined that I would approach him throughout the years for continued advice and friendship.

But last November I received this email:

"For those who have not heard, Ralph (the crazy tall guy that took us all out on so many different adventures) was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I have not heard from him yet what the prognosis is in details (he had a series of biopsies this past week), but pancreatic cancer has a 1 year survival rate of about 15-20%, 5 year survival rate of 5%."

"What?!" I cried.

Handsome looked over, "What's going on?"

"Ralph, my professor. He has cancer. It's bad. He's probably going to..." My words trailed off and my eyes filled with tears. I closed them and tipped my head back resting it on the back of my chair. "Thanks a lot life, you've done it again: Squashed a bright spot before its time."

I showed up to Ralph's house with other students for a Thanksgiving dinner. He was thin and pale and his eyes were happy, but heavy. He gave me a huge Ralph hug and crooned to my infant son. We sat reminiscing about how he convinced me to go to Thailand and laughed about my spliced-hand incident.  Sharing pumpkin pie and turkey he explained his treatment and the grim statics of his type of cancer. He asked about my life since graduation and I told him about some of my jobs and said, "Now I have a baby and I'm not sure what I'm going to do."

Ralph looked at my baby and pointed, "That's what you're going to do."

After a few hours I left and said goodbye. One more bear hug and I teared up,

"Bye Ralph." And he smiled.

That was the last time I saw him.

Last Monday death extinguished the giant. It sucked him out of this world with a swift icy grip and the sun responded with dimmed light. I am bereaved of a teacher, a mentor, and a friend and I am left struck in awe at the beauty and cruelty of life.

In his last lecture titled, "Crossing a Frontier by Exposing Yourself to New Ideas," Ralph offered the 13 most important principles he had learned in life:

1. Search for truth vs simply defending truth
2. Scholarship: The language of the search for truth- READ and read broadly
3. Be an intellectual "migrant." Question "reality" and cross a frontier
4. Step outside of your box. Build a new one, and then step outside of it too.
5. Embrace the contradictions, they are opportunities to cross frontiers
6. Be yourself, but if yourself is a jerk...be someone else!
7. Dare to be different, but know why you are-- different with a purpose
8. Live life fearlessly ("The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man but one")
9. Speak Truth to Power
10. Look for ways to affirm versus destroy without lowering the bar
11. Allow yourself to be taught by others with a different perspective from your own
12. Joy in Interaction- The Relationship
13. Life is in the journey, not the arrival

The guy was an influential researcher, an executive director for the Rural Sociological Society, a renowned educator, a life-longer learner, a husband and a father, but Ralph Brown was also my friend. 

That son-of-a-gun wrangled the politics of his university, fought his way through red tape, and successfully created a myriad of enlightening learning experiences for the students he loved. But despite his academic success, he took time to speak and counsel with me individually. He always remembered important details about my life and joyfully inspired my pursuits. If I had been the only student with whom he paid this special consideration, it would have been commendable, but this is how he treated all of us. He truly loved his pupils. 

And he fulfilled his initial promise to me back in that Soc 429 class years ago: he gave me questions instead of answers and I am better for it.

Death took Ralph, but it can't take his words. We, as his students, have embodied his teachings and we will scatter his influence across our lives.

Goodbye Ralph, take care friend. And good luck on your next adventure. 

For those interested, here's Ralph's last lecture: