Doc

Doc: a eulogy
6/6/08
By Robert Clark

Doc is dead, and when my mother called me last Sunday to say that his funeral had been that day, I was surprised that it had not happened a lot sooner. I was surprised that I hadn’t left behind the loop from which I would have heard the sad fate of this sick, old man years prior. And yet, the source was the same as it always has been: a man from my childhood who calls whenever something momentous happens to one of my old scout leaders.

I met Doc in September of 1993. My church’s chapter had sponsored me to go to San Leandro, CA and take a first aid and CPR course. Commander Bob, the same man who would call my mother nearly fifteen years later to announce Doc’s passing – call my mother, because I will always be a boy to him, and boys don’t have numbers – he decided that I was mature enough to participate in an all-day course and earn a merit badge.

Doc’s legs were stilts on which he would rock, from one to the other, to scoot across the room. In the years to follow, he would carry a cane or a walking stick, but I don’t remember any such thing that first day. I didn’t know what Agent Orange was, and I had never heard of it, but I saw Agent Orange shimmy to the chair and squint at us through thick glasses.

He taught us how to dress wounds, sling arms and legs, and treat shock as though we were preparing for service as combat medics, but I have never treated anything but a deep cut, and that was my own. He gave us more information than was probably healthy for an eleven-year-old boy to take about the kinds of wounds the Red Cross won’t tell people about. But he was passionate about it, and in the years to follow, I would get to watch Doc spend time with hundreds of boys who loved him for his quirkiness, especially in light of his determination despite his obvious and constant pain.

Some of my scout leaders taught me important skills in leadership or important outdoorsmanship skills. I am not sure what I learned from Doc. I got a splinter once, and after removing it, he told me to watch carefully for signs of a blood infection. One very late night, suffering some mild hypothermia, I roused Doc for some help. He gave me an antacid. Around the campfire, he would tell fascinating stories that I could not bring myself to believe.

Teaching was beyond doc, and the friendly atrocities of the war had, by the time I was a teenager, put medical expertise out of his reach as well. He loved. I haven’t seen him for five or six years, but I believe that love was never beyond his reach. You couldn’t miss the wizened old man, and insofar as he loved, he was an image. This shrunken, bent, abused old man on a cane was a monolith.

I will miss him. God bless you, Doc.