Month: October 2008

YouTube – Barack Obama: Closing Argument (Full Speech)

My friend, classmate and Fraternity brother Andy Hoefer wrote this beautiful piece on Larry and his passing.

Andy is now the Marion L. Brittain Fellow at Georgia Tech’s School of Literature Communication and Culture and recently became a Ph.D. himself.

Well worth your time…

I’ve been thinking about Larry today, and I keep coming back to two things he said to me, once and many years ago, the other, frequently and as recently as a few months back.

The first came during my final semester at Wofford. That term, my Thursday nights had an odd rhythm: from 3 until 7 or 8, I spent in Larry’s Religion 340 seminar. About 6:30, I mentally checked out, consumed with the bacchanal that awaited. From 8 or 9 on, I drank. Heavily. Larry, a veteran teacher and a former fraternity boy himself, saw right through me. And he never confronted me about it; that wasn’t his way. He dropped a hint, though, and one day, began a sentence with a prepositional phrase that remains burned into my brain: “Andy, when you’re ready to really pursue the life of the mind….”

I have no idea what followed. I was too consumed with the idea that, apparently, something called “the life of the mind” existed, and in a few months, I had already evinced the fact that I was not yet ready for it! And thus, my academic career began in earnest. I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about. And I wanted to prove to him that I could handle it.

And yet, what I ultimately learned from Larry was not a lesson about hardwork, or seriousness, or intellectual rigor, but a lesson about love. Larry McGehee loved as fully as anyone I know: his family, his students, history, literature, food, music, all of it. And though I can’t remember the topic of our last conversation, I do remember how it ended: Larry said, “Love you,” and I repeated the words stiffly, uncomfortably. I know this because our conversations always ended this way; each time we talked, the words came a little more easily for me, but never with the ease that Larry offered them.

As I’ve thought about Larry for the last few weeks, I’ve realized that the love Larry expressed for each of us and the deep and abiding concern for rigorous intellectual and academic pursuit were not two distinct concerns, but in fact, facets of the same impulse. And if I learned anything from him, it’s that a love of ideas and a love of those around you are the same thing. Larry taught me that the life of the mind didn’t preclude a life outside the mind–a life rich in family, invested in community. For Larry, knowledge should be sought in service to others. Intellectual pursuit, he taught me, is invigorating, but it is really only of substance when we share those ideas with others, and when we listen to others (something he did so much better than I do). Inquiry should be like prayer, and the exchange of ideas a sort of communion: we should think hard about things, and our questions should push us beyond the regular limitations of understanding and closer to divine elements within ourselves. And we must not keep to ourselves rather, we should rejoice in the exchange of ideas and in the possibility that we might transcend the divide between the Self and the Other. When we do this–when we ask questions relentlessly, when we thrill in the pursuit of knowledge and the exchange of ideas, and when we begin to use those ideas to improve ourselves and the lives of those around us–we realize the best of ourselves. I can’t imagine anything closer to the ideal of agape than that.

Larry never seemed to far from the best of himself, and while he’d probably hit me for saying this, that quality brought him as a close to saintliness as I’m likely to encounter in my life. I miss him already.

I’m still processing all of this. I’m realizing (more than anything), I’ll be processing this for a very long time…

10/27/2008

SPARTANBURG, SC– Dr. Larry Thomas McGehee, 72, died Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008, at his residence. Born May 18, 1936, in Paris, Tenn., he was the son of the late George Eugene McGehee and Margaret Thomas McGehee. He was educated in Paris, Tenn., public schools, and was a graduate of Transylvania University and Yale University. He was retired vice president and professor of religion at Wofford College, former chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Martin, and former administrator of the University of Alabama. Dr. McGehee was an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, and Kappa Alpha Order. He wrote a weekly column, ‘Southern Seen’ for more than 100 newspapers.

Survivors are his wife, Elizabeth Boden McGehee; two daughters, Elizabeth Hathhorn McGehee of Baltimore, Md., and Margaret Thomas McGehee and her husband, Daniel Paul Parson, of Clinton, S.C.

A memorial celebration will be made public at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Elizabeth B. and Larry T. McGehee Endowed Scholarship Fund at Wofford College, 429 N. Church St., Spartanburg, S.C. 29303; to the Library of Transylvania University; or to the Library of the University of Tennessee at Martin.

An online guest register is available at www.floydmortuary.com.

Wofford College President Benjamin B. Dunlap expressed his thoughts about Dr. McGehee:

Larry McGehee was many things, as can be said of most highly accomplished people. But, in his heart, he was a classicist—it was he who coined ‘A Classical College’ as a tag-line for Wofford. By classical he meant more than a fondness for tradition. He meant a passionate devotion of the best that has been thought and said. After becoming president, I often referred to Larry as ‘our wise old Nestor,’ and, recognizing the Homeric allusion, Larry always smiled.

Larry was also an ordained minister and a theologian, and, if Saint Paul was right about faith, hope and love, Larry not only excelled in all three departments but agreed that love was the one that mattered most. He loved his family, he loved the South—especially Kentucky—and he loved Wofford College. Only his students over the past decade can truly say how much he loved those he met in the classroom, but nothing could have pleased him more than their decision to create a scholarship at Wofford in his name. On the last day of his life he watched a Wofford football game, not because football was of paramount importance to him but because one of his students was playing on the team.

Larry was a friend to all of us, and his death causes us great grief. If I might say something to make Larry smile again, it would be to note that, in addition to his two beloved daughters, he also had many sons whom he had taught and advised in the manner of wise old Nestor. And, having said that, I would add a classical reference from Homer that describes the rough and often tragic efforts of the Greeks who’d fought at Troy to find their way back home: ‘Only Nestor, who had always shown himself just, prudent, generous, and respectful to the gods, returned safe and sound to Pylus, where he enjoyed a happy old age, untroubled by wars, and surrounded by bold, intelligent sons. For so Almighty Zeus decreed.’

Welcome home, old friend.”

Wofford College – Obituary: Dr. Larry T. McGehee