|
|
|
Last Updated: Sep 8th, 2009 - 08:07:52 |
Our Lives Are Filled With Long Days and Short Years: Memories of Mickey Hellyer
by John Ohliger & Fred Schied
Our lives are filled with long days and short years. As the days and years pass we hope that adult educators will remember one of their own, Mickey Hellyer. Mickey died this June after a long illness at the age of 49, following his second kidney transplant operation. Because of his illness, Mickey spent most of his time in DeKalb, Illinois. It's unfortunate more adult educators outside Northern Illinois University didn't have the privilege of knowing him. And it was a privilege to know him. Mickey was a socialist—"a Marxist with head, heart, and humor"—as one friend said. Mickey was also a teacher, a scholar, a col-league, a Chicago Cubs baseball fan, and most importantly, a friend you could count on. He rarely let his long and painful illness interfere with living his life with a grace and a sense of humor the rest of us can only envy.
Recently some of Mickey's friends came together to celebrate Mickey's amazingly diverse life at a memorial service at Northern Illinois University. People came who knew Mickey for over thirty years; friends from his old six-ties band when Mickey was a wild rock n'roller who played guitar and sang with "Bill & the Bachelors," a group that became a legend in roadhouses throughout the area; friends from Mickey's work at a maximum security prison; friends from his adult education classes; and friends from Mickey's service as an unofficial alcoholism counselor. We would like to share some of these friends' memories of Mickey Hellyer:
Two of Mickey's great passions were history and the Chicago Cubs. I miss Mickey most when I watch the ball games. He said that it was history that kept him going. He even left the hospital to go to adult education history seminars. To him history and the Cubs were life.
I read in the paper that he "died after a long illness." I never knew Mickey except in the context of this long il-lness, but I never thought of him as a sick man. I remember Mickey as the midnight prowler, in the base-ment of the library jotting down notes, helping students. I guess his illness induced insomnia, but his insomnia was a gift to the rest of us. He was always ready to talk, to listen, to laugh, to counsel.
One of the great things about Mickey was that he'd make you laugh. He was one of the few people ever in-terested in laughing at the university. Mickey taught me a lot about scholarship. He was one of the few students in the adult education program who did serious and pas-sionate scholarship. The last time I saw Mickey at the hospital he had tubes running all over him, but there he was working on an article on Gramsci, the Marxist theoretician. Mickey made a real contribution to the field of adult education; he put the field on notice and changed the way we think. I hope that we can publish more of his important work.
We worked together as counselors in a very tense max-imum security prison. It was a stressful, anxiety-producing job. Mickey never ever stopped wise-cracking. So we got through the years there always laughing and carrying on but doing our jobs at the same time.
I think it's very important we keep the memory of a great man like Mickey Hellyer alive. Especially his engag-ing smile! A Marxist with a sense of humor is almost as rare as a Fascist with a kind heart. We need more people like Mickey. In his writings, Mickey was presenting us with the radical truth in a way we could enjoy it. I'm wearing this button today because this is Mickey: A VISIONARY REBEL DREAMER OBVIOUSLY WAY AHEAD OF HIS TIME.
Mickey saved my life. I mean that. When I was in alco-hol detoxification once again, it was Mickey who came to me and said, "You know you're going to die, don't you?" No B.S.; Mickey had been through it; he knew, and he stayed by me. He literally saved my life.
Mickey and I had an on-again off-again friendship. But one thing about Mickey: you could depend on him when it really, really mattered. When I was single, pregnant and in the hospital giving birth, I was an emotional mess. Mickey came to see me even though he hated hospitals. He'd crack jokes; not let me feel sorry for myself. It was Mickey who got me moving; refusing to let me take things too seriously.
The memorial service started with a member of Mickey's old band playing some of his favorite songs. It ended with a tape of one of Mickey's favorite recordings: a jokey folk tune well known around Chicago, "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request." We all laughed. We're sure Mickey was laughing too.
Eduard Lindeman, America's preeminent adult educa-tor, was thinking of human beings like Mickey as an ex-ample for us all when he wrote, "Sympathy and humor must somehow be blended in people of goodwill. The adult teacher who is lacking in humor will make of adult educa-tion, not a happy adventure of the mind, but, rather, a grim despondency of the spirit."
Adult Continuing Education Today • September 24, 1990
LERN has granted non-exclusive permission to this website to post any articles written by John Ohliger for Adult and Continuing Education Today.
© Copyright 2004 John Ohliger.com
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
