From: "shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com" <shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Clayton Stromberger <cstromberger@austin.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: "shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com" <shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 9:14 AM
To: "shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com" <shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums <winedale-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: James Loehlin

Good morning everyone –

I’ve been reading and re-reading these messages since they came in yesterday.  They’re all wonderful and so true. 

Thank you, Doc, for your note yesterday morning.  It was just perfect.  I haven’t been able to find the words and I’m so grateful that you did. 

He loved all those things, and loved you and JoAnn too, very much.  The times you guys were able to be together meant the world to him. 

I had such a strong feeling of a wave of both tears and love spreading out like a shock wave as the news spread yesterday.  The wave of text messages, calls, emails, people checking on each other, holding each other, crying together, laughing together after crying – it was an overwhelming day.  An awful and remarkable day.  I think in the past 36 hours I’ve had several dozen of the most intense hugs of my life.  And our love for James – and Laurel – was at the heart of it all. 

I keep thinking of Laertes and his speech of fire that “fain would blaze/ but that this folly douts it.”  I can’t seem to get very far without melting in tears. 

John:  Yes, we will never stop missing him.  The world became a touch less fun, a touch less noble. 

Carl, you’re right, the love and light was shining from our friend every time you walked into his room in this final stretch of his journey home, whether it was at Seton or Christopher House, no matter how many tubes he had running in and out of him.  When those blue eyes opened, he saw you, and smiled, and always asked, “How are you doing?”  or “What have you been up to?”  He chose to be fully present for as many moments as he could carve out in the past year and two months or so.  On Wednesday, Polly and I sat with him and Laurel and their dear friend Kevin and “Jeopardy” was on.  James was excited that the Final Jeopardy question topic was “Artists,” so he unmuted it.  We all gave it our best shot.  (Answer:  “Who was Bartholdi?”)

Chris:  Yes, James was our elder at Winedale, and saved us many a time from wandering in utter confusion.  He was my elder from the first moment we began working on 1.1 of “Merchant of Venice” forty years ago this past June, even though I was a world-weary senior and he was a skinny bright-eyed freshman.  When he began speaking as Bassanio, we all went, “Whoa… Where did that voice come from?”  Suddenly, Shakespearean verse was leaping off the page in all its richness and grace in a resonant baritone of complete authority.  He already knew then more than I know now or will ever know about Shakespeare.  He had the most gentle and subtle but authoritative way of correcting you if you mispronounced a word, or mis-scanned it.  So many times I’ve called him over the years:  “Hey in this play, this line, how do you say that word and what does it mean?”  He always knew. 

Michael:  Yes he was brilliant, and did understand people, in a very quiet way.  He was deeply shy, so deeply shy that it was often misread for aloofness when we were young.  But he was always listening, thinking, and had a true gift for appreciating others in a profound way.  The delight he took in his friends and students and in all of Laurel’s friends and family and his sister Jenny and his dad John and mother Marge and all the people they knew and loved – it was inexhaustible.   

Lynn – yes, I’ve heard those two words, kind and gentle, so many times in the past day and a half.  It was just in his marrow.  Last night, I spent some time with a group of the summer class students, and one of them told me that he was so bereft when he heard the news that he ended up going to James’s office and sitting on the hallway floor there and just “saying what I had to say.”  And he talked to James about everything but Shakespeare.  “I wanted to talk about all those other things that he cared about and enjoyed… I would have loved the man even if he’d never been my teacher.”  He allowed himself only a few words of Shakespeare:  “We few, we happy few.”  James’s favorite speech, and one that this student had asked James to perform last summer, in the midst of that dark time just after his diagnosis, as the chemo was just starting to take its toll.  James of course stepped up and performed it in a way that no one else could.  “What I’m taking away from all this is… to be kind,” he said.  “Not kind in an effusive way, like some people are, but in a real and gentle way, like he was.  He never said a bad thing about anyone.”

Visiting the students, there was heartbreak, but also real joy.  They can’t help but be happy when they get together.  They had a great summer with James.  Doc used to always tell us that a special part of the summer changed when the audiences arrived and the Barn filled with chairs, and that was the part of the summer they had with him, up until the chairs came in. 

Doc, the summer class students were very touched by the email you sent to them yesterday. 

Robin, I love the memory you just added to the thread.  A gibbous moon!  Yes, he always knew the damn word.  Which meant he kicked our ass at Scrabble at Seton the few times I was able to play with him.  He had the most elegant and beautiful way of pronouncing words too.  He should have recorded a spoken version of the OED.

Terry, James did indeed get to watch the Longhorns cream Alabama, with Laurel and a room full of friends and family, and it was glorious.  He didn’t feel great that day but reveled in the victory and was excited for the season to come.  Then the next day he had he and Laurel had their Cowboys swag on – jerseys with the number 1 on the front and “LOEHLIN” on the back, sent by a beloved former student whose dad runs the concessions at JerryWorld – and cheered on Dallas as it crushed New York.  James did not like using competition in his teaching but when it came to football, look out – he got a fierce gleam in his eye when his team was going for a win.  “That’s what I’m talking about!” he slowly hollered out as the ‘Pokes ran up the score on the hapless Giants.  It was a hoot. 

Jenny – yes, brightness and serenity, that’s right.

Mary, Bruce – yes, a blessing, and a lovely man.  And Madge and David, beautifully said, especially what you wrote about Laurel.  Laurel has been such an incredible guide to all of this through this experience, from her CaringBridge posts to her texts to her coordinating visitors to her gift to speaking her mind and openly sharing her emotions and her boundless love for James and all the students they care for so deeply.  I’ve been in awe of her grit and courage from the beginning of all this last summer. 

Like Laertes I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze, but this folly douts it.  I just wanted to get something down to say thanks to all of you for helping all of us as we grapple with this news and absorb it.

I remember James giving me a note in ’84 about Orlando in 1.1 in my confrontation with Oliver:  “Draw on up to your full height…” – I’d never heard anyone say anything like that before.  It stuck with me.  I hadn’t realized I wasn’t drawing on up to my full height.  I’d been kinda slouching, hiding a bit, tentative.  He was saying:  Go for it.  Stand up tall and go for it.  He already knew how to do that and continued demonstrating for me how to do that for the next 40 years. 

I’m trying to do that today, my friend, but it’s hard.  There will be a lot of things I’m doing for James from this moment forward.  We’ll carry all of these wonderful qualities with us as best we can.  Those blue eyes shining.  A kind friend, as you said, Doc.  Every single time you saw him, no matter how awful he felt in that hospital bed. 

He never complained once.  I never heard a word of self-pity or anger or resentment.  As that student said to me:  I hope I can be that strong.

We’ll watch the game tonight, and cheer on the team, for him.  In my mind, that Tower will be orange for him.  And we will continue to love Laurel, and support her, and to do what it takes to keep Shakespeare at Winedale going strong, because a part of James will always be out at that Barn and the meadows around it and under those pecans and outside the dorm where he taught the kids to sing, “A great while ago, the world begun, with a heigh ho, the wind and the rain…. But that’s all one, our play is done, and we’ll strive to please you every day…”  And the woods around the Barn, where he and Laurel and the students ranged far and wide in their “peripatetic” performances.  He gave that place and the students and the program his heart and soul every spring and summer.  So he’ll always be out there with us.

Love and really intense hugs to all of you –

c

PS.  I took a lot of photos of James out at Winedale last spring and summer, looking to capture some moments, memories.  I knew they’d be precious later.  Last spring, when we were working on “Midummer” out there the second weekend, there was a lovely crescent moon – not gibbous – and James stopped our work on the play to suggest we go outside and look at it, since it was such a presence in the text.  So he walked slowly down the road with his walking stick and pointed out how you could seen Venus, I think it was, “in her glimmering sphere,” and the moon, together.  Ever the gentle teacher, sharing a deep appreciation.