Missing a good friend

It’s funny how you can see something that will trigger memories about someone who passed away and make you just really miss them all of the sudden. The missing them can almost feel just like it did the moment when they passed away. Today I was missing my good friend and mentor Dr. Charles Trevathan.

Charles was my favorite professor when I was a student at ACU, and when I started teaching there a few years later he helped me tremendously with my own classes. He and I had a lot of great discussions and he always had an encouraging word for me when I was struggling. He thought I was awesome at my job, and that meant a lot to me.

Charles passed away from a sudden heart attack about a month before the last election in 04. He and I discussed every presidential debate that year, and I have missed him throughout this whole election season. He would be so excited about Obama winning the election. He would be even more excited about discussing this election cycle in Cultural Diversity.

I came across something today that made me miss him even more. I’m thinking about replacing my vote Obama bumper sticker with a new one since the election is over. As I was looking through all the Obama victory stuff on cafepress.com I found this t-shirt design:

That image reminded me of a framed set of pictures Charles had in his office that he would take into his Cultural Diversity class when they discussed the African American Civil Rights Movement. The first picture in the frame was of Rosa Parks sitting on a bus looking out the window. Charles said that when he found that picture he wondered what she was looking at and what she was thinking about. Several years later he found a picture of a white family at a KKK rally. The mother and father were in full Klan garb, and their little girl, who was probably two, was standing in between them, her hands holding onto a hand of each parent. The three of them were facing away from the photographer and were watching a burning cross. He put that picture in the other half of the frame with the Rosa Parks picture, so that is looks like she is looking at and thinking about that family.

When I saw the pictures of Dr. King and President-elect Obama side by side, I had a sudden urge to talk to Charles about his pictures of Mrs. Parks and that white family and suggest that he remove the Klan picture and replace it with a picture of Obama. I think he would have loved that idea. As soon as I thought of it, it just hit me again that he was gone and I suddenly missed him almost as much as when I found out he died.