I revised the October 6th public presentation to work in the radio slot for today's broadcast on WVPE. [audio]

A lot of folks were gathering on the IU South Bend campus to celebrate the memory of two remarkable people, Eileen Bender and Harvey Bender. They were longtime area residents, university professors, major figures in their fields, and community leaders. To deepen the celebration, a distinguished guest, a Nobel laureate, would give a public lecture. Outside on the plush lawn, a large awning was set out, rows of chairs and a podium for a brief ceremony. A big new tree had been planted in memory of Harvey and Eileen. But there was just one problem. All the nearby trees were not even changing color yet, but every leaf on the new tree had curled into a crispy brown. This new tree gave a strong impression that it was dead.

Planting a tree in autumn takes me back to Westover Greenhouses, where I worked when I was in college. Our customers knew that there were a few choice weeks in the fall, just right for planting trees, but you could see real doubt on their faces when they looked at some of our twiggy, leafless specimens. Laborers like me didn’t need to know very much biology to earn a paycheck at Westover, but we all knew how to check an autumn tree. Out there near the end of the smallest branches, we would use a thumbnail to scrape away just a little bark. And what we would show a customer under the bark was the bright current of green cells in the cambium layer that is the fiber of life in a tree. So I walked over to that new ceremonial tree and took hold of a small branch and scraped back a tiny curl of bark. It was beautiful to see the undercurrent of green, not just because that’s what you want to see but also because I was really feeling the lively undercurrent that still flows through many of us from the lives of our two departed friends.

I used to see Harvey pick up Eileen at the end of a long day of work. In later years her vision was poor, and she looked small and even frail as she walked very slowly down the corridor beside him. He was tall and distinguished, and ordinarily he had a long stride, but not now. Yet I never saw a speck of impatience there. It was as if Harvey had distilled in his heart a blend of love and service that meant that walking the speed Eileen walked was the perfect speed to walk through life if he got to walk next to Eileen. For me, the example of his decency is evergreen.

Eileen kept her hair in a tidy flop of blonde bangs. She wore big elliptical gold hoop earrings that you never saw anywhere else, and her eyes and smile were keen above the point of her chin. She worked hard and kept long hours, but her office door was always open to students who wanted to talk about literature. Eileen had a playful understanding of human nature. She told me once, “You know so-and-so is a good leader. He gets other people to do his work for him.” I think what she meant was that if you respect people and invite them to join you in a project that makes our lives better, people will do a lot of work when they feel that respect and believe in the shared mission. As the co-founder of a statewide teaching group called FACET, Eileen got dozens and dozens of good teachers to aspire to be even better teachers and to work together playfully, for years, to strengthen teaching at Indiana University. Eileen, wherever you are, I’m on to you—you wanted IU to be a better place and you figured out how to get the rest of us to carry on the work even after you were gone.

So it’s true, we all lose wonderful friends like Harvey and Eileen Bender, but on reflection we still have the undercurrent of their lives as green and present as the hidden bright cambium of an autumn tree.