For my ancestors

(Blogger's note: this material was previously been submitted in different form, to the STEP program of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association).

We have celebrated the end of the earth's "productive" season for agriculture, and now memories of those persons dear to us who have died come to bloom again. I find peace in my life now more than ever from ritual and discipline, though aberrations and outliers from the routine I embrace and term them instruments of "Alzheimer's prevention". I think the cycles of gardening that have helped me attune my own psychic rhythms to the seasons, also help me appreciate the time of year and the need for respect shown our departed elders. Not only are the departed from my family, but also from my work and community life.

According to his Facebook account, his 79th birthday would have been yesterday. He was not, to my mind, a person who beckoned attention his way but who on receipt, ate it up like it was fresh hot fried chicken. He embodied for and expressed from his students rigor, professionalism, good cheer and clear thinking. When he undertook advising first the pre-medical students, then all those entering health careers at our University, we all knew that the pre-med kids were getting a very big bargain with him.

He was first my clinic supervisor when I entered the world of CSD as a client - my long time  stuttering problem had waxed and waned over the years of adolescence, but suddenly became a moose sitting in my traffic lane - as my vehicle was pointed towards a future as a teacher. At the end of my summer session after my junior year of university, the growth in my speech fluency allowed me to refocus my career plans to include - speech-language pathology!!

He was rightly skeptical that a liberal arts student who had been focusing on analysis of novels and plays, would easily flip to swim well in the world of whole-language reading and phonological processes. He accompanied me to the 1974 ASHA Convention in Las Vegas as coach and interpreter, to guide me to sessions that may help answer my question: What is therapy all about? He gave no more than a chuckle to my comment that, at 3 a.m. prior to the last day of meetings, I had respectfully declined an offer to "party" from the back of a mustard yellow Mustang on the Strip. "I have to get up at 6 - Convention!", I said. He put the topper on my pre-service training, even before my first undergraduate classes in CSD had begun (I had my fourth year to complete enough classes for a minor, and enter the master's program the following Fall). He taught me, at age 21, to tie a Windsor knot to prepare for Convention meetings.

He cultivated discipline and clarity in our clinical work. As our clinical supervisor he was a model of joy, method, and requiring big time investment of the client and supports in the treatment plan. He taught you  that you could accomplish big things. All this from a deceptively quiet guy.

Thank you, Dr. Hugh Bateman.