Hearing from Lots of Friends

More than one-hundred-sixty friends and family members sent me birthday well wishes.

You might say I asked them to do this, and I suppose you would be right:

I put my picture up on Facebook and announced it was my birthday.  Otherwise, I could have counted the number of birthday greetings on my fingers and toes (without actually going to my toes).  And that was a wonderful number in itself.

But back to Facebook.  About half those responses were “Likes.” It was fun to read through the list of those who checked the “Like” icon. Clicking “Like” — you should pardon the expression — might be likened to driving by and honking or waving but not stopping to say “Hello.” With this gesture, the “Likes” told me they saw my — shall I say — likeness and let me know they know I’m still alive after eighty-two years.

Beyond the “Likes,” an additional eighty or so took the trouble to say a few words or write a sentence.  

A few wrote paragraphs.  

Some put up art work with candles and cakes and posters and balloons.  

One of my most outrageously creative former Anderson University students sent a wild video-to-end-all-videos, with explosions, fires, cakes, and an echo-chamber voice calling my name and wishing me “Happy Birthday.”

The list of “Likers” and “Writers” included nephews and nieces, great nieces, a fellow minister or two, colleagues from journalism graduate school, fellow members of community volunteer boards, a neighbor, fellow church members, my barber, fellow emeritus professors, members of Lifelong Learning classes I’ve taught at Anderson University, just plain friends, and a whole raft of former students at AU.

International greetings came from a father in Germany and his son in an internship in China.  The son lived with a family next door to us a year or so back as an exchange student.

Stateside, I heard from Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Maryland, Colorado, Iowa, and Mississippi.

It’s hard to grasp that I heard from one hundred sixty-plus people on my birthday, even though these responses came after I posted my mug shot.  Most of those folks, I count as personal friends.  Not all intimate friends, but friends all the same.  A few on the list, I hardly remember.  After all, I turned eighty-two the day I put up my picture. :0)

I consider a post from Ivan Liechty, one of my former students from Anderson College (now Anderson University), especially significant for any day of the year.  Ivan gave me permission to quote his post which follows:

“Happy Birthday! Thank you for your mentorship when I was at AC; even though I took a turn in the wrong direction for a little while, I did come back to a better life and am so thankful for everything. 

“By the way, Inherit the Wind [a play I recommended that he read] is still one of my favorite books and movies (the Spencer Tracy version). I commonly tell people that nobody is all good and nobody is all bad and that as soon as our statues get a crack on them we are too quick to want to tear the entire thing down (paraphrasing). That book has taught me to always look at the motivation behind someone's actions and even if I disagree, frustrated or angered, as long as their actions are not malicious in intent then everything can be worked out and forgiven... At the same time I hope that my misgivings and misunderstandings are never caused by malicious intent on my part.”

Inherit the Wind is a drama based on the so-called Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925.  A high school biology teacher, John Scopes, was on trial for teaching evolution, which was against the law in Tennessee. The trial attracted international attention in part because two famous lawyers headed the legal teams: Clarence Darrow, for the defense, and a former secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution.

This is a dramatization, written several decades after the trial, and not a transcript of the proceedings. But in the courtroom scene, Henry Drummond, the character representing Clarence Darrow, says he is trying to establish that everyone — including the judge — has the right to think.  The judge says the right to think is not on trial.  Drummond-Darrow insists it is “very much on trial” and “fearfully in danger” in what is happening as witnesses are interrogated by the prosecution.

The playwrights, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, may have been looking beyond 1925 when they put those lines in about the right to think being on trial.  Several states in the Deep South, including Tennessee where the Monkey Trial took place, keep on passing anti-evolution laws.

My point in having students read this play and other provocative material was to try to get them to think new thoughts.  I am haunted by the memory of a request from a young man who came to my office many years ago: “Mr. Webb, can you tell me some books it will be safe for me to read?”

I don’t know what I said in response to that request.  I probably sputtered and stuttered and stammered.  I had never been asked that before and have never been asked it since. 

As I hear from my students — on my birthday and other days — my hope continues to be renewed that I succeeded at times in my efforts to get them to think along lines that may not always be safe.