Goodbye Norb

This is Norb, College Professor of Philosophy, mentor, friend, father figure, Director of an Honors College that was his incubator for his collection of people with possibilities.

Norb changed my life.  He changed the lives of the thousands  of students he taught, came into contact with, chose, to be part of his experiment to challenge the tragically gifted.  😉

He was at times fatherly, stern, a cheerleader, a mirror.  He created an environment that nurtured learning.  He challenged us all to become all that he believed we could be.

He challenged us to confront “the other” in our fellow students, in our studies, our communities, and ourselves.  He introduced us to philosophers, complex ideas, other religions,  topics we might never have encountered in our home lives.

He was a kind and decent man.  He was a wise and generous man.  He was an active learner all his life.  He was involved with his family, his community, and his country.  He achieved "arete" in his life.  Most of us will never encounter and never know, a person so singularly good and complete as human beings go.  He even grew his own food, shared it with others, and was environmentally conscious at the beginning of that movement and throughout his life.  He took his students to Meadowcreek, a learning community for environmentally sustainable living.

My time in his presence was short, just as he warned it would be at his opening address at the beginning of our four years with him.  I was among the lucky ones to garner three extra years under his tutelage as a graduate assistant to the Honors College.  So I also knew him as a boss, if that term in all its confines could ever apply to him or do him justice.  I never had a boss like him before or since.  Nothing was impossible, there was only the effort to discover what was and was not possible, then take a different tack to again try to accomplish the impossible.  A good example of this was when he waited a year for a computer guy to build a new website for the Honors College without success.  Norb came to me one day and asked me to build their website.  My protestations to him that I'd never built a website before, that I knew nothing of computer language didn't even cause a blink in those twinkling eyes of his.  "Go talk to this person," he directed me, giving me the name of the web master on campus.  "I told her you're very bright and will be able to figure this out.  She'll get you started."  Then off I went to learn how to accomplish what I thought was impossible.  I refused to let his faith in me down.  I truly believed in his wisdom.  If he thought I could do this, he must know something I didn't.  True to his assertions, with a little tutoring, I did figure it out, and I created within thirty days, a new website for the Honors College, complete with graphic images, photographs, biographies, and links to information on the college, e-mail links, and documents.  I was both relieved to have successfully completed the task, and joyful that his faith in me was not misplaced.  This was the thing about Norb.  You believed in him.  You believed what he said. You felt with his faith and guidance, you were up to any challenge.

I kept in touch with Norb after moving away for law school, my first professional job, and really the rest of my life. Sometimes he’d surprise me with a phone call, or an e-mail, just because he had been thinking about me and wanted to check in to see how I was doing. He was a personal reference for me for more than one job. He was even a witness for me in court when my divorce and custody proceeding turned nasty. He was the closest thing I ever had to a father. So it was hard when the contact became more infrequent due to his health issues. It became harder to communicate with him and I lived across the country, too far away to drop in on him at home, like other former students could who remained in that town. He passed just about two months ago, and it has taken me his long to finish what I wanted to say. Though I know I’ve still left so much unsaid. I grew up so much under his tutelage. He was such a huge part of my life for seven years, and a life line for all the years that followed. The Honors College will be hosting a memorial for him in September. I will fly back to Arkansas to be a part of it, to join with that community one more time, to remember Norb, and how short our time is with some people, so appreciate those days and every moment you have with them.