Death of a US History Professor

Last Wednesday, I went to US History class, after sitting around at the bar at the golf course on campus (no joke - it is not as glamorous as it sounds, but it does have some really good french fries) with Brian, one of the guys from my class.  We were waiting for our US History professor.  We planned to buy him beers and ingratiate ourselves so that he would like our term papers and give us As.  He never showed up, so we just talked for an hour or so and went to class.

Upon our arrival, the guy who teaches the class before our class was still at the front of the room.  He wasn't packing up.  He was just hanging out.  After a few of us got there, he says "I'm sorry to tell you - your prof died over the weekend."

Oh.  That would be why he never turned up at the bar.

I, like the idiot that I am, said "Are you serious?"  Because really, is a seventy-something-year-old man going to joke about something like that?  I know I wouldn't, if I were seventy-something, because I'd always be afraid that Death was standing over my shoulder, ready to make an example of me and my flip ass.  So, yes.  He was totally serious.  We have absolutely no details (and I even looked up the obituary - it's just a death notice), so we have no idea what happened.  We did discover that he had a wife.  I had heard he had a French girlfriend.  He may have had both.  Wily old bastard.

Understandably, the new guy was baffled at our class rules.  He just kept saying to himself "open book tests?!" as if we had told him that the professor had taught our class wearing reindeer antlers and a fuschia-pink serape.  We did manage to convince him to keep our open-book test, and to keep our attendance-free policy, because it wasn't fair to the people who had developed expectations of the class based on the syllabus.  (We like to call those people Test Day people, because that's the only time we see them.)  I'm going to class today just to see what it's like.

While I thought he was a horrible history professor, he was a pretty nice guy.  And I'm so sorry to hear of his passing.  I feel really badly for his wife, and possibly his girlfriend, if he had one.  And his kids, which I know he had, because he told me about them once.  But I can't help but be glad that, if he's in heaven now, he's got all the facts straight.  And also, if he's up there, he's probably read this blog.  Sorry for making fun of you so much, Miller, but really - you deserved it.