A Good Knight

By Raymond C. Phillips Jr. ’53

As I was about to leave the memorial service for Bill Bowden, his daughter Ann handed me an envelope. “A memorial-service favor,” she called it. I thanked her, gave her a hug, and walked out to my car. I opened the envelope. It contained a sheet of paper, a copy of Bill’s January 1963 recommendation supporting my application for a teaching job at Western Maryland College. That I had asked Bill to write this, I had forgotten, and he probably did, too, because during our last two years of twice-monthly visits he never mentioned it. After all, 40 years is a long time, and I’m sure he wrote hundreds of letters on behalf of his students. Ann later told me that her dad kept extensive files and that she had found the letter while she and Bill Junior were cleaning out his upstairs office at 227 Parker St.

Bill’s death on July 26 left a big hole in my life. Sitting in my car after reading the letter, my first thought was I wanted him back so I could say thank you. The letter reminded me that I was his student for six semesters, courses in British literature and the senior seminar. Bill listed my grades—a C, four B’s, and an A, adding “the grades suggest my judgment of him as extremely thorough, conscientious, and reliable, as painstaking rather than brilliant.” I mostly agree with that assessment, especially the not “brilliant” comment. He next commented on my football career for the Red Devils. A fan of the team, which I never knew, he wrote, “it seemed to me that as an athlete he showed much the same qualities he did as a student.”

Again, I wished I could have thanked him, but more important, I wish I could explain to him that my lame excuse for getting a D on one of his Shakespeare tests—that football practice had taken up too much of my time—was not quite the truth. Looking back, I’m sure he didn’t buy it. The truth was I had not worked hard enough. Rather than castigate me, he said something to the effect that he hoped I would get my life in order and do better. I did.

Was Bill the professor who most influenced my becoming a college teacher? Not exactly. During my college days I was rather shy around my professors, so I wasn’t one to hang around their offices, and over the years after graduating in 1953, I doubt whether I saw him more than a couple times—at one reunion, I recall speaking with him briefly. We only corresponded once, and although I kept meaning to stop by his house, I never did until the late spring of 2001, a visit that began our seeing each other twice a month down to the last day of his life when I sat by his bed holding his hand until I saw Ann’s car pull into the driveway. Not wanting to intrude on her time with her dad, I stood up, squeezed his hand and said, “Good-bye, Bill.” Barely conscious, he mustered enough strength to look up at me and apologize for not being able to talk to me.

At the memorial service, I asked Ann if she had been able to converse with him in his final hours. She sadly replied, “No.” It’s possible, then, that his last words to me were his last words. If so, and even if not, I am honored for this testimonial of friendship, this reminder that a teacher’s influence can be spread out over half a century. Our many visits together, his last words, made it clear to me that my professor was a true gentleman, a “gentle knight,” indeed.

Ray Phillips retired in 1999 after teaching American literature at Western Maryland (now called McDaniel) College for 35 years.