Requiem

I’ve gone from being an inveterate partier to something of a recluse, and my activities of this past weekend speak volumes of that transformation. From the time I returned home from work Friday night until I went to work Monday morning, I left the house only twice. The first foray was to buy a lottery ticket and a burger. The second was for the social highlight of my weekend—singing at a memorial service for a man I'd never met.

As I was driving to the church, it occurred to me how odd it was to be devoting my Sunday afternoon to someone about whom I knew so little. The man, nameless to me, had apparently attended the Unitarian Church. His widow sings in the choir, but I don't really know her either since I’m new and she’s a soprano. As the radio announced the 0-0 close of the first half of the Packers/Giants bout, I inwardly grumbled that I could safely deduce the deceased and his family certainly weren’t Packers fans to have planned a service occurring in the middle of a game.

Once at the church, I found the tables where I could deposit my food contribution (hell, no, I didn’t cook—I’ve been transformed, not replaced by a freakin’ doppleganger!), and expended extaordinary culinary effort to arrange my fancy pickles and olives in faux crystal dishes. The choir warm-up was starting, so I assumed my place for the brief rehearsal. The music and camaraderie dissolved the little piece of resentment I'd harbored about spending a gorgeous Sunday afternoon not only inside but without even the benefit of a big-screen TV.

With my head feeling a bit dull and thick (not atypical, some would say) and 30 minutes remaining before the service commenced, I went in search of coffee. After a couple false starts, I found the life-giving substance in what is known as the “West Living Room” in this fabulous Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building. There I also stumbled onto displays set up to share glimpses of David Woodward’s life.

The pictures showed an attractive man, with a character-chiseled face and neatly trimmed beard. An obituary, blown up to poster size, indicated that he was considered important enough by the New York Times to rate an impressive amount of copy. He was British. (In the memorial service, his brothers in their UK brogues lovingly explained that he had merely been on loan to us Yanks for 40 years. Perhaps that heritage explains why there was no empathy for planning his memorial service around American football legacies.) Dr./Professor David Woodward "transformed the history of cartography from a directionless Eurocentric field into a respectable subject now global in scope." He and Ros had three children, one of whom died tragically at 7 in 1978. And David himself had died before his time of bile duct cancer just four days shy of his sixty-second birthday.

On a table a couple letters were displayed that appeared to have been written to Ros in his initial stages of infatuation with her. His intelligence, warmth, dry wit, and gentle self-deprecation were evident in these very brief missives, not to mention his glowing adoration of this woman to whom he was ultimately married for almost four decades. Copies of books he had written were on the same table.

During the memorial service I learned more about this quiet man, his unflagging drive in his profession, his remarkable lack of ego, his kindness, his amazing wit, his influence on and support of colleagues and students, and his propensity for mind-numbing detail. Of course, it was the guy who had the least relevant material to share who took up a full quarter of the service. One of David’s former colleagues, a dry and dusty cartographic librarian, seemed to think nothing of detailing 20 years of David’s resumes, including the full text of letters exchanged, and pretty much 30 minutes of excruciating detail about the history of cartography. This is the stuff Vogon poetry* is made of—it’s always the most boring person who thinks it’s okay to spend the most time making people contemplate chewing their collective foot off at the ankle to escape. My ass fell asleep during this sonmanbulistic trial by dullness, and I was surprised I could hoist said dead ass out of the seat when Mr. Anethesia finally wrapped it up, and it was time for our choral number.

Despite that one extremely long and disheartening stretch of verbal desert, the service was ultimately an event that left me wishing I had known David Woodward, even if it had been only during the one brief semester he sang in the choir. To him I say: Sing on, David. Make your maps in heaven. Chart the maps of history and the history of maps. Know that you were treasured by many. And that there are those of us who haven't met you who value your legacy as a remarkable human being who illuminated the aspirations of others and exhibited humility in an arena where egos were more the norm. Live on, Dr. Woodward.
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*See Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".