This week, the Second Laird Miscellany would like to take the opportunity to remember the life of a Carleton alum who had a unique story to share. Ronald Mario Rowe (‘66) passed away last March, and during Carleton Reunion that following summer, a former classmate shared a little bit of his story with a professor in the English department. Hearing about this, the Miscellany decided to get in touch with another classmate, Stanley Deming (‘66), and ask him if he could recount Ron’s story more fully.
It began about ten years ago, Stan recalled, when he received a letter from Ron around Christmastime. Ron wrote that his guru had recommended he get in touch with some of his old friends, and Stan was one of 25 that he decided to contact. Along with the letter there were some odd drawings. The unexpectedness of the letter and the strangeness of the drawings piqued Stan’s interest. He did not know Ron very well.
Both Ron and Stan had graduated from Carleton in 1966. Stan could not recall them being very good friends – Ron was an English major and Stan was a Chemistry major – but they both took piano lessons and would perform in recitals together from time to time. In 1965 and 1966, Stan remembered, Ron won the English Department’s Class of 1885 Prize “awarded annually to the student submitting the best work of the imagination in prose.” That was the extent of their interactions in their undergraduate days, and they did not stay in touch.
Puzzled but intrigued, Stan replied to Ron’s letter with a Christmas card and family pictures. Ron thanked him for his card and told Stan that he was the only person who had replied to his letter. Stan happened to be consulting in the Boston area where Ron was living at the time, so he invited him to dinner.
Dinner was a strange affair. Stan arrived early, and was still waiting for Ron when he noticed a “street person” enter the restaurant looking disheveled and hollowed out. It was only when he came to Stan’s table and sat down that Stan realized this was Ron, his former classmate.
Stan recalled with bemusement, “He ordered. I ordered. He ate. I ate. It wasn’t really a conversation. I’d ask a question to try to get things started, and he’d answer with a simple yes or no. No return questions. All the while he didn’t look at me, and kept rearranging the salt and pepper and silverware and water glasses. After about ten minutes, before he had finished his meager meal, he abruptly go up, put eight dollars on the table, said he had to go, and left.”
Stan was struck by how different this Ron was from the person he had known back during his time at Carleton, but he continued to invite Ron out to dinners. The next few meetings were similarly silent dinners, with Ron finishing his meal in ten minutes. After their second or third meal together, Stan followed Ron to the bookstore across the street from their restaurant. There, Ron finally told his story.
Ron was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late 20s. As Stan explained, “He didn’t know what had happened, only that he was in a hospital bed or in jail in Chicago. He told me that at one point his mind told him a marine was trying to harm his father, and so to protect his father he fought with the marine … and the marine beat him up.” Other details about Ron’s history remained a mystery to Stan, though he did know that Ron was under a doctor’s care, and was potentially receiving medicine to treat his schizophrenia.
Over the course of several dinners, Ron warmed up, and their conversations approached the natural back-and-forth of an exchange between friends. After their fourth or fifth dinner meetup, Ron invited Stan to his room and shared with him more drawings and some of his poetry. Ron and his sister had been hoping to publish a book of his poetry, but that effort had not gone anywhere; he had sent his work to several places, some credible and some less so, without success.
With this in mind, Stan decided to step in and help Ron with his dream. He had a little experience with self-publishing and a lot of appreciation for his friend’s work. After some convincing, Ron allowed him to type up and publish some of his poetry. Stan used a website to publish a short book of poetry, and sent Ron 100 copies of his first book. “He sold some of these,” Stan said, “and made a little money from them, but more than that he was proud to be a ‘published author’ with a book he could point to.”
Together, they finished the second book of poetry just before Ron would pass away. Though he never saw the final copy, he undoubtedly would have liked to see his work in print again.
Ron passed away March 22, 2016, age 71. A couple of his classmates flew to Boston for memorial service in April, Stan included. In mourning his death, they also celebrated his imagination and talent. “Again, I’m a chemist, not a poet,” he wrote to us, “but I did find myself drawn to some of his poetry. A lot of it had to do with mystical religion, and I didn’t relate much to that. But some of it expressed amazing observations of people and places, stuff I liked and began to appreciate. Deep. It gave me different perspectives.”
Below are two of Stan’s favorite poems by Ron.
The Mind is a Treacherous Friend
The mind is a treacherous friend, lurking
In dark corners of life like a fiend, always
Ready to assault the soul with painful doubts,
Sometimes as cutting as a sword, sometimes
Letting droplets of blood fall to the earth.
Often she deceives with soft cunning wiles,
Coming in the guise of a saint (although she is
An agent of the negative power). She masks
Her intentions. She has caused me to suffer
Atrociously. I fight with the mind daily,
Like a contest between two wrestlers. Sometimes
My soul is victorious.
A Scarecrow
A scarecrow, limping around bloody fields
Of a dawn, decided to travel all the way
To Florida, to give the crows free rein.
While they spent time eating grains of corn,
The scarecrow lounged on a beach a thousand
Miles away, frightening seagulls.