Remembering Mangelsdorf

Death is a bottomless hole into which unsaid appreciation and affection go.

Memory is a helpless grasp of what was Ð and a shaky hold on what needs to be cherished henceforth.

Philip Mangelsdorf was merely a name to whom I should send my application in 1997: the graduate adviser at the University of Arizona Department of Journalism.

Two months before my impending return to the United States and two days before the submission deadline in May, I FedExed my application to the journalism master's program from Sri Lanka to this name. I asked him, in addition to taking care of the departmental end, to kindly send the other part to the Graduate College. A few days later, he replied by e-mail that the Graduate College envelope was duly sent and my departmental application had been approved. A final Graduate College decision should come my way soon.

And small world that this is, he said he taught journalism as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in one of the Philippine universities I had attended. He was no longer just a name but a person with a personal touch. A personal touch that could be rare, I would later discover, in a large public university like the UA.

Professor Mangelsdorf met with his graduate students on a one-on-one, regular basis. With his leaning, looping handwriting, he slowly recorded our individual schedules and appointments. He listened and nodded patiently to my complaints as if every bit of them was legitimate. To think that he never said a word about the cancer that was eating away at him Ð I heard the raspy voice and saw the tired, wrinkled face, but that was that.

It is easy to see professors as impersonal entities at the institutions they represent. My youngest son's teacher likes to tell parents how she is perennially amused at the surprise her pupils express when they see her at a grocery store or a restaurant. "Yes dearie," she would jokingly tell her pupils, "Mrs. Jones does wander out of the classroom once in awhile."

Perhaps I have not outgrown the teacher-in-the-classroom image, as I remember chuckling with some other graduate students about how cute, old, graying Professor Mangelsdorf looked as he straightened his picture along the mezzanine corridor of the Franklin Building, home to the UA journalism department.

He was involved in the field in a number of ways, including two stints as head of the department. In 1976, the Arizona Newspapers Association selected Mangelsdorf as the state's Outstanding Journalism Educator. Did I see the dedication that the old man had for his career and profession as a journalist and an educator? Did I see his dreams and hopes for the journalism master's program? Did I see his frustrations about what he could not do? No, I only saw him in a position to be able to improve this and that and why doesn't he?

In death, pride is a cruel memory. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter anymore. In the charged and sensitive area of personal autonomy and identity and in these times when paternalism is highly suspect, I did not like his suggestion that I write about a historical event in the Philippines at the turn of the 19th century instead of reform movements in both Asia and the United States. I usually resent any suggestion that my authenticity as a person is tied to talking and writing about my country of origin, and I equally resent the attribution of my way of thinking to the influence of Western thought and lifestyle. But Professor Mangelsdorf was just being helpful. He lent me old journals on Philippine mass communication. He wanted me to meet a UA anthropology professor who studied a tribe in the same region of the Philippines where I come from. He talked about his experience teaching in the Philippines and about the people he met there. He was just being himself: a man interested in the people he meets.

The last time I talked to Professor Mangelsdorf was when I told him of my decision not to continue with the UA journalism master's program. In his characteristic way, he indicated that I must go where I think I would be happy, and would I please keep in touch?

I didn't. Months later, when I needed a recommendation from him to enter another graduate program, I learned he was undergoing cancer treatment. I was shocked, but the thought of death did not enter my mind when I sent him a get-well card.

In May this year, I read his obituary in the Arizona Daily Star. A life condensed into a two-inch death notice. I cried. Even after a longer memorial story followed, I felt a connection forever severed. He brought me in, after all, to the university.

Goodbye Professor Mangelsdorf. I will always remember you.

Glenda Claborne is a former UA journalism graduate student. Philip Mangelsdorf, known and respected throughout the Tucson journalism community, succumbed to cancer May 15 at the age of 74.