Dr. Peter Wilfred Stine (1939- 2011)
About a month ago now, one of this area's great personalities--an orator, a pastor, and a professor among his many callings-- passed away. Peter Stine (whom I knew as a professor in the English Lit. department at Gordon College, where I majored) was one of the few people I ever knew who hushed a room by entering it. It awed me because I always wanted to command such respect-- I had never seen a room quiet so fast. As he entered the room , he literally filled the doorframe as he passed through, pausing briefly to seat himself and rock slightly forward to face us all. "My name is Dr. Stine," he boomed, "and I thought we should get this out of the way first thing. This," he roared, though a whisper would have been just as effective, "is my fake leg." Here he rolled up his right pantleg, and lo and behold! A fake leg. "And," he continued, "I somehow managed to park five minutes away, limp here on one leg, and arrive on time. I expect the same from you. I'll even spot you two legs to do it with." A classic Dr. Stine moment-- disarming curiosity with humor, while simultaneously letting us know the standards were dangerously high.
I was hooked. After that one class, I signed up for two more Stine-run classes the next semester. It was the best move I made in my entire collegiate career. In addition to clearly being enraptured with the literature he taught (and imparting that love by example to at least this wide-eyed sophomore), he clearly cared about us, his students. He just had a funny way of showing it. Beware the student who wandered in late. One morning for an 8:00am class in about the furthest point on campus, a varsity soccer player wandered in about five minutes late. When Dr. Stine pressed him for a reason, he mentioned that they had a big game today and he needed his sleep. It was never a good idea to give Dr. Stine any fodder to fire back with-- when you were late, the best idea was to hang your head in shame and beg for the mercy of the court, which was surprisingly abundant considering Dr. Stine's gruff exterior. In this case, however, Dr. Stine was fed up with varsity athletes in general skipping his classes. "Sheppard!" he rumbled. "So what you're telling me is that your soccer game is more important than four hundred years worth of classic literature?"
Bewildered, Sheppard tried to backtrack. "Yes... No... not at all. No,sir..."
Dr. Stine cut him off. "You may want to go back to sleep, Sheppard. Clearly, you haven't slept long enough." With a wink, he turned back to the class.
I had never experienced any sort of joy in reading poetry before I took Dr. Stine's Romantics class... an experience in more ways than one. This class was an upper-level experience and a much smaller size... only about fifteen of us huddled in a small circle, which is to say that there was truly nowhere to hide. The mysteries of Byron, Wordsworth, and Shelley were unraveled before our eyes.
What was truly memorable were the moments that you just couldn't script-- moments that professors with a lesser sense of humor or a less bombastic nature might have let slide, but moments that Dr. Stine seized. My turn before the firing squad came one afternoon when I showed up to a 3pm Romantic Poets class of his having missed a different 8am class I was taking with him. I forgot my own advice about never offering an excuse, and, when asked to justify my absence, very righteously responded that I had taken my sick girlfriend (who was later to become my wife and Queen of this small kingdom) some food for breakfast. Stine rocked back in his chair with a big smile. "Sick,eh? I suppose you had to give her mouth-to-mouth?" The class roared, and feeling somewhat less self-righteous, I sunk into a nearby chair. My one regret was that over the past five years, I have on two or three occasions ALMOST written him a letter thanking him for being one of two people that set me wanting to share my writing talents and for being a mentor to a little twit who he didn't know from Adam. But I never wrote that letter, and now, I never will. I guess this will have to do. God bless, Dr. Stine. I hope that the streets of gold are treating you well.
I haven't laughed with so much joy in quite some time. I love laughter and tears togther, they balance one another quite nicely. When someone's presence commands your attention, respect and love all at once they must be doing something right. I have absolutely survived by the two words he bid us not to forget, it went something like this: "If there is nothing that you remember from this class, do remember this,....God sustains." When the walls close in, and life disappoints, I remember those words and their simplicity. As my grandmother would always remind me, "Simplicity is profoundity." The great and powerful Stine knew this too, and his wisdom will always speak to me. I took one class with him, and it was worth every Sallie Mae dollar. It was the proudest and grandest grade i ever made, a big beautiful B. To me, far richer than any A could afford.
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