Reflections on Curtis Walton

Delivered at His Memorial Service

Earlham College

November 13, 1999

Tim McLarnan

For those of you who don’t know me, my name’s Tim McLarnan. I was Curtis Walton’s teacher in mathematics, I was his advisor, and I was his friend. I wasn’t Curtis’ only teacher, though, and I wasn’t his only advisor, and I certainly wasn’t his only friend. I’m here to try to share some of my thoughts and memories of Curtis, but I’m sharply aware of how many of the sides of Curtis’ life I know nothing about, and of how many of the rest of you have as much right as I, or more, to be standing where I am.

It is an occasion of awe and solemnity to try to tell the life of any other human being. To try to tell that story on the occasion of another’s death is more awesome and awful still, especially when that death was so young, and so tragic.

My sense of inadequacy grows also from the complexity of Curtis’ life and from the surety that I know only bits of a complex and subtle whole. Still, I am called, as all of us are called, to try to tell out the legacy of my friend. It is a legacy of bright beauty and of bleak battles, and it is the story of a community which both loved and nurtured and struggled with our remarkable brother.

To begin with what perhaps mattered to Curtis above all else, Curtis was a superb student of mathematics–crisp, insightful, and utterly committed. His energy and focus were a great blessing. More than his mathematics, though, I’ve found myself this last week thinking back on Curtis’ seriousness and honesty. Curtis spoke to me directly and forthrightly about himself, his struggles, his family, his friends. He approached with seriousness and honesty and integrity political issues, issues of personal faith, issues of his own sexuality. I am filled with admiration for someone who can dare, as Curtis did from the beginning of high school, to speak with simplicity and directness about his sexuality. Curtis’ insistence on cutting through polite half-truths to the facts beneath made him unsettling and alarming at times, but it is a great call to engage the world seriously.

Those of us who hang out in Dennis Hall also remember the Curtis we saw there daily–cheerful, polite, considerate, soft-spoken, engaged. I miss him. I miss seeing him at work outside my office. I miss our frequent conversations.

I also remember a Curtis who struggled.

I remember a Curtis who struggled with faith. Curtis arrived at Earlham as a Quaker who had attended a Catholic high school, and who was deeply interested in Catholicism. As he studied philosophy, I watched Curtis move to a position of rejecting religious belief, yet continuing to struggle. I think he longed to have faith, but thought that he could not do so with intellectual integrity. It is a mark of Curtis’ desperate seriousness how much I think this tension between the desire for meaning and the conviction that logic pointed him elsewhere tore at him. For Curtis, neither the truth of faith nor its falsehood seemed a complete answer, and he knew the question mattered enormously. I don’t know where these struggles eventually left Curtis, nor where they would have left him had he lived longer. In some of my last conversations with him, Curtis was still wrestling–wrestling with Friends, wrestling with his renewed attraction to Catholicism, which he thought compelling in the broad sweep, and troubling in particulars.

I remember also a Curtis who struggled with depression and with suicide. Two years ago, when Curtis was getting ready to go to Budapest, I asked if he thought this was wise. He had recently attempted suicide at Earlham, and I was worried at seeing him leave for a stressful program in a foreign country. Curtis spoke to me calmly and seriously about his suicidal thoughts. He believed he understood how to get help when those thoughts became too intense. In any case, though, those thoughts were part of what Curtis was, and were not going to change. Curtis’ view was that he could allow those thoughts to make him a cripple, depriving him of opportunities like the mathematics of Budapest, or, knowing who he was and that those thoughts were a part of him, he could refuse to be a cripple and could find as much joy and excitement and opportunity as possible in life. That's the basis on which he went to Hungary, and, I think, the basis on which he lived the rest of his life.

I remember, most disturbingly, a Curtis who struggled with rage. It’s not a nice image, and not one I want to share today, but it’s one I cannot omit without being unfaithful to Curtis’ own clear and consistent testimony of honesty. Curtis was my student and my friend. I loved Curtis. Curtis could also be angry and frightening, especially in some of his e-mail. I’ve tried to understand where that anger came from and to work through some of it; I’ve only partly succeeded. I know that Curtis’ mother hopes very much that we at Earlham can see the fury that Curtis directed at the College as coming not from Curtis’ deepest self, but from Curtis struggling with illness. I know also that while I sometimes saw anger win when Curtis sat alone writing e-mail, and when Curtis allowed himself to see the world in abstract terms, I almost always saw care and compassion and love triumph when Curtis was actually speaking with another concrete human being. Like Curtis’ mother, therefore, I am persuaded that the light within Curtis was deeper than the darkness with which he struggled.

The fact of Curtis’ anger, and the fact of Curtis’ suicide, cannot help but leave us with difficult questions both individually and as a community. Could we have done things differently? Did we fear him too much? Did we love him as we ought?

As we remember Curtis, I want to share my utter conviction that Earlham made a difference in Curtis' life, and that Earlham could not have made a further difference. I would have expected to find myself today painfully dissecting my actions to find the point at which I could have changed things. I am not. I am convinced we did all we could. We were right to love Curtis, and we were right to find him troubling. Curtis wrestled with much, and sometimes, we wrestled with him. I am grateful that in the end, both collectively and individually, we allowed our compassion and our hope and our love to overcome our frustration and our fear, and that we allowed ourselves to participate for 4 years in the life of a remarkable young man. I know that Curtis’ mother believes that Earlham’s love and support for her son gave Curtis 4 years of life.

I believe that the light within Curtis was deeper than the darkness with which he struggled. I can’t end, therefore with images of anger. I have to come back to images like the Curtis who made a special trip to my house because he had heard we had a new kitten, and he wanted to see it. I have to think again of Curtis playing in the yard with my kids as he waited for me to get home from a walk. He taught them martial arts poses; they liked him a lot. They are here today to help us remember.

Finally, I have to end where I began, with Curtis’ passion for mathematics. For Curtis, mathematics was an art of transcendent beauty and meaning that could call him back from almost any place of despair and could give him joy and peace. When I visited Curtis in hospital here after a suicide attempt at Earlham, I took him 2 gifts. One, an icon of the Resurrection, was really a gift for me, though Curtis accepted it with grace. The other, the two volumes of Knopp’s Theory of Functions, he took with enthusiasm. I am glad to know from the Dean at Bryn Mawr that this central passion was with Curtis to the end, that he delivered a lovely seminar for the Mathematics Department three days before his death. I was pleased also to hear from the Dean how much the folks at Bryn Mawr had seen of the Curtis who was our friend.

Curtis’ mother expresses the hope that Curtis has at last found a peace that eluded him here. I hope we as a community and as individuals are also at peace, knowing how much we did to help a remarkable young man blossom. I’m proud of what we offered Curtis, and proud of what he achieved. I thank you all for being a part of his life with me. As we mourn Curtis’ death, I hope we also celebrate his life and the role we played in it singly and jointly. May Curtis find peace, and may the love of the God with whom Curtis wrestled and in whom he longed to believe be with him, and with us all.