Prof. Lou Van Dyke --1928-2019

Who am I to doubt the wisdom of real educationists? I dare not question the research, but I can't help remembering the old days, when small groups were unheard of and profs stood up front to impart an hour's worth of wisdom, occasionally taking a question, but otherwise holding forth like Old Testament prophets.

Some were really lousy, but some were good. Some knew how to season a spiel with comic touches or so much passion we'd leave the room wondering how on earth we'd ever lived without knowing about the French Revolution or Sherwood Anderson or the Doppler Effect. Some delivered the goods by telling great stories.

Lou was one of those. I'm sure I'd still be calling him "Professor Van Dyke" if he'd not been a colleague not all that long after I was a student in his class--American history. Little did I know that I'd be spending most of my retirement in the history of the American West, a field he opened up for me in 1968. 

For reasons I don't remember all that well, that particular semester wasn't a good one. Part of it, I'm sure, was the late 60s world, Vietnam, and the tight conservative politics at a small, Christian college campus in a far corner of Iowa. I was starting to discover ideas that put me outside the circle of righteousness, which could be, back then, very tight. I'd applied, in fact, to the university back home in Wisconsin, thought that seriously about leaving Dordt College.

And I skipped class. Too often, in fact. It was a bad semester all the way around. My grades tanked.

Sometime that year, I missed a quiz in Professor Van Dyke's American history. Classes were big at Dordt College back then--fifty, sixty, seventy kids in American History, requirement for graduation. I didn't show up one day when Lou gave a quiz. 

No big deal. I had roommates who took it. They got me the answers. 

I went in to Professor Van Dyke when he made it clear no-shows had better take the quiz.  Aced it. I was brilliant. 

Professor Van Dyke called me in, sat me down in his tiny office, pulled out my quiz, showed me what I'd done, then suggested he had some reason to doubt me because not one other kid in the entire class managed to get every last answer right. I don't remember the conversation, but I do remember him giggling. He had me dead-to-rights.

Cheating, back then, must have come easier to me than lying about it. I admitted the whole truth, so help me God. But Professor Van Dyke didn't reign down holy terror, didn't fail me, didn't threaten to send a letter home (those things happened). I didn't ace the thing, but I don't know that he counted what I'd done against me or not. I don't remember. All I do remember is Professor Van Dyke being vastly more agreeable than I would have guessed a Dordt College prof would have been, circa 1968. I remember a giggle.

A decade later, he'd become my colleague, but I'd not forgotten what had happened ten years before. Hard as it may be to believe, most faculty back then would stop whatever they were doing about three in the afternoon and head over to the coffee shop. I remember exactly where we were that day--Lou and I--on the sidewalk over to the SUB, when I brought up that perfect quiz. I had to sometime, I knew.

"Lou," I said, "it's been bugging me--you remember that time I cheated on that American History quiz?"

He kept walking. "What?" he said, and that was before he had a hearing aid. 

"When I was a student--when I cheated on that test, got the answers from my roommates, you remember?--"

Then he stopped. "In my class?" he said. "You're kidding."

"It sticks in my mind," I told him. "Just wanted to bring it up." Maybe I said something about guilt.

Lou always had a wry smile, loved irony, was always just a bit wayward himself. That day, I don't think we missed a step on our way to the coffee shop. He just looked at me with that sly grin and giggled. Just giggled. 

He was a wonderful guy, a colleague for a couple of decades at least with an ample supply of great stories. Throughout his entire career at Dordt, he was one of very, very few sworn, out-of-the-closet Democrats, and he was always proud of it.

That story sticks with me. When I think about it, I can't help but believe that Lou Van Dyke, every once in a while, probably felt himself somewhere just outside the circle of righteousness too. 

I don't know, but I can't help thinking that there may well have been a time that Professor Van Dyke, Lou, the preacher's kid, may well have cheated on a quiz himself.