Sad News
I guess I should go ahead and post this, because I guess it really is true. I've kind of been drifting in and out of this daze today, where sometimes I think I'm just dreaming or I've imagined everything and just convinced myself it was true.
Prof. Allen didn't show up for our 7:00 class last night, so after 20 minutes everyone kind of left. Some of us found another English professor and told her it was odd/ worrisome for him to be a no-show, and then I came home.
As it turns out, she was (rightly) concerned and notified the chaplain and some others, and they and the police went to his house. Apparently he died very quickly and peacefully of a heart attack in his easy chair. Apparently he'd spent the whole day grading papers and getting ready for class.
I didn't know any of this until this morning, when I ran out the door in a rush (as per usual) to give a presentation about Bonners stuff, and the chaplain saw me and said, "You're an English major, right?" and told me maybe I should sit down.
Just to clarify for non-LC people who might be reading this- Prof. Allen was my advisor and my professor for two classes this semester. I met him before college even really started, and he had a habit of having a "meeting" with you where you'd go in, get all the business covered, and half an hour later he'd still be leaning back in his chair, talking. He talked a lot about his family, and his time in college, and going to Europe and serving in Vietnam. He usually talked to me about his sister, who had adopted a special needs kid, because he knew I worked with special needs. I remember my freshman year, when I had gone in for some academic thing and he asked how college was going so far, and I was complaining about my roommate that semester. To which he replied by telling me a story about his roommate his freshman year, who had actually been a distant cousin that had set fire to the floor of the dorm room (in such a way that it didn't actually burn, just to see what Prof. Allen's reaction would be). And it's weird, because even while I was typing that I just remembered I'd repeated one of the stories he told in class to a couple different people just last week.
Also, more importantly, he had a way of keeping tabs on his students- not in the posessive way of some teachers ("MY students," "MY kids," etc.), but just in a very laid-back way. He would remember, for example, on any given occasion that I was from an insanely small town, the names of both my parents, that I was at college a year early, that I liked to write fiction but not so much poetry, that I was interested in teenagers with special needs, blah blah blah... you know, I actually can't list all of those things. He just knew things, and remembered his students and- of course- let them knew they were remembered.
Or at the beginning of this semester, when I had the Plague, he saw me in the hall a week later and said I looked _much_ better and he hadn't been so sure I would make it through class the week before. In a funny kind of way that also meant he was a little serious.
I can't even go through all this stuff. There's just three years of Professor Allen being Professor Allen, and bumping into him and having him as my advisor and being in classes with him and all of that. And there's so many English majors that were walking around today with the same face, which is kind of blank and kind of pained and kind of shocked.
I can't believe only two days ago I was sitting in his class.
I should probably just stop writing this and go to bed. I just wish when I woke up it would be Wednesday again, and everyone could start over and this time Prof. Allen would of course make it to class and he would be ok again. I wish that a lot.
Prof. Allen didn't show up for our 7:00 class last night, so after 20 minutes everyone kind of left. Some of us found another English professor and told her it was odd/ worrisome for him to be a no-show, and then I came home.
As it turns out, she was (rightly) concerned and notified the chaplain and some others, and they and the police went to his house. Apparently he died very quickly and peacefully of a heart attack in his easy chair. Apparently he'd spent the whole day grading papers and getting ready for class.
I didn't know any of this until this morning, when I ran out the door in a rush (as per usual) to give a presentation about Bonners stuff, and the chaplain saw me and said, "You're an English major, right?" and told me maybe I should sit down.
Just to clarify for non-LC people who might be reading this- Prof. Allen was my advisor and my professor for two classes this semester. I met him before college even really started, and he had a habit of having a "meeting" with you where you'd go in, get all the business covered, and half an hour later he'd still be leaning back in his chair, talking. He talked a lot about his family, and his time in college, and going to Europe and serving in Vietnam. He usually talked to me about his sister, who had adopted a special needs kid, because he knew I worked with special needs. I remember my freshman year, when I had gone in for some academic thing and he asked how college was going so far, and I was complaining about my roommate that semester. To which he replied by telling me a story about his roommate his freshman year, who had actually been a distant cousin that had set fire to the floor of the dorm room (in such a way that it didn't actually burn, just to see what Prof. Allen's reaction would be). And it's weird, because even while I was typing that I just remembered I'd repeated one of the stories he told in class to a couple different people just last week.
Also, more importantly, he had a way of keeping tabs on his students- not in the posessive way of some teachers ("MY students," "MY kids," etc.), but just in a very laid-back way. He would remember, for example, on any given occasion that I was from an insanely small town, the names of both my parents, that I was at college a year early, that I liked to write fiction but not so much poetry, that I was interested in teenagers with special needs, blah blah blah... you know, I actually can't list all of those things. He just knew things, and remembered his students and- of course- let them knew they were remembered.
Or at the beginning of this semester, when I had the Plague, he saw me in the hall a week later and said I looked _much_ better and he hadn't been so sure I would make it through class the week before. In a funny kind of way that also meant he was a little serious.
I can't even go through all this stuff. There's just three years of Professor Allen being Professor Allen, and bumping into him and having him as my advisor and being in classes with him and all of that. And there's so many English majors that were walking around today with the same face, which is kind of blank and kind of pained and kind of shocked.
I can't believe only two days ago I was sitting in his class.
I should probably just stop writing this and go to bed. I just wish when I woke up it would be Wednesday again, and everyone could start over and this time Prof. Allen would of course make it to class and he would be ok again. I wish that a lot.