People | George
Davis
Looking Back: A Year After the Murders of Three
UA College of Nursing Faculty
This IS a Day to Remember and Celebrate the Lives of Cheryl McGaffic,
Barbara Monroe, and Robin Rogers. Three nurses. Three
teachers. Three beloved colleagues. And to their families,
even much much more.
Each of us within the university but outside
of the College of Nursing understood immediately the depth and magnitude
of the losses – for
we immediately thought of our own close colleagues in our own departments. What
if?? Thus we can also understand and appreciate the action, response,
and outpouring of support by the leadership, the faculty, the staff,
and the students of the College of Nursing – and how they grieved,
and how they rebuilt, and how they forged their way forward, yet always
taking time out acknowledge and to celebrate the legacy of Cheryl,
Barbara, and Robin. And, I am so proud of all of the other colleges,
who stepped forward throughout the year in brilliant shows of support
for their sister college. This will be evident today as well
in the Courtyard Dedications.
My Mom, now 89, was a nurse. RN from Grant Hospital, Columbus. Thus
I was raised by a nurse. She brought me through measles, mumps,
chickenpocs, tonsillitis, broken collar bone, broken hand #1, broken
hand #2, broken toe, stiches, more stiches, the biggest black eye on
record, and shoulder injury…all with amazing tolerance, and
of course gentleness and care. But, what I learned in the aftermath
of Oct 28, 2002, is incomparable demands on professional nurses, and
the strength and courage and resourcefulness needed, in abundance,
in carrying out their work. It is this strength, viewed collectively,
that has risen into conspicuous view in the past 12 months.
Primarily today for me is about celebrating teaching
and the teacher-student relationship. You may recall that last year I quoted Robert Grudin,
who discusses the teacher-student relationship as perhaps the most
beautiful and effective interaction which civilization affords. Today
I point out the words of Alice Reich, from her essay, Why I Teach,
whose words are apt. “I keep teaching because it is,
for me, the practice of what it means to be human…I wanted [my
students] to understand that the conditions of our own humanity are
the conditions of humanity as a whole, that we are essentially no freer
than the least free among us, that our well-being is dependent upon
the well-being of others. I wanted them to believe that if they accepted
these premises, they could and must work to make a better world.”
I also think of Howard Lowry, who argues that “evil, for all
of its many forms, is not the chief enigma. The shining enigma
is the good. Here is…the excellence that
begs to be explained. Here are loyalty and love and unstinting
sacrifice; …the stunning plus sign life puts on so many of its
forms… the good has a way of recovering itself.”
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