TRuth

Tom Ruth had polio as a youth. He walked with a cane and his left foot, with the orthopedic shoe, swung out and around like a club. His classroom was full of old maps in frames, artifacts from the sub continent, and photos of people like Churchill and Disraeli. He called us gentlemen and said we must work to keep that title. When we would have our monthly room inspections he would bring a boom box out into the hall and play Wagner's ride of the Valkyries and bang his cane against our doors if they were closed. The paper I wrote for him, on the Irish Potato Famine, he told me was a perfect example of a piece of writing by someone with far too much talent for such a lack of discipline. Mr. Ruth wrote letters home to our parents that year, the parents of all those who lived on his hall. He told them of our graces and dirty habits. He wrote about the way we came together to defeat the upper floors in broom ball and how most of us had made it through an entire year under his watch without spending a week on dish duty in the dining hall. But for those of us who had, we had gained a skill that would keep us employable no matter the circumstances. As he put it, with people living longer, and more and more being cremated, the world is no longer in need of ditch diggers, but dishwashers, there can never be enough dishwashers.