Dearest Patricia
You are just the kind of tonic I need these days and I agree with you heartily about the value of genuine sentiment and the weakness of sentimentality. I am just a little like Zorba the Greek when he asked, “Boss! Boss! Do you trust me? If you do I can do anything and I will!!” so long as you will occasionally give or send me little testimonials such as the one you gave me - was it Saturday? - written on the photograph of a peak in the dolomites of Austria - nothing else matters. But just as you asked me last summer when you were trying to come to a decision about Sylvia “Carl, please stand by me in this” - I am moved to ask that you stand by me in the changes that lie ahead, when so many of my contemporaries are trying - as they are - and as I haven’t told you to make an old man of me before I’ve reached that stage - stand by me. Let me continue to look to you as the shining spirit of youth as I regard you. Keep me in touch with what the vigorous thinking, young people - the students on campus are thinking and striving for so that I’ll not only know but I’ll know who to keep acquainted with and so that I can make myself sufficiently useful to them that my ideas will be welcomed and my support and participation will be welcomed. I continue to feel young in my mind - I want to stay that way - I want to be felt useful because still adventurous in my own mind. Certainly you are the closest or one of the closest ties that I have with the youth of the college - and I’d rather be recognized or welcomed and sought after for what help I can render them than by all the old timers in the thousand or more faculty members we have at San Jose. I’d rather continue to be known as someone who could be counted on to move with the times and to “get in someone’s hair” occasionally because I’m still growing than to be known in any other way. You are the outstanding young person whom I know and love for the strength you represent. There are others - in SEE, in tri beta, in the freshman camp organization, in the following of some of our younger minded faculty, etc. But I do need the feeling that I have an anchor somewhere and that I belong. This is why I call you for an occasional “good night” and I’m repeatedly cheered and uplifted by t6he warmth and stimulus that I hear in your voice. Just keep it coming and any time I sound as if I might be under pressure to falter, why, do as you did tonight and put me or keep me on the night stand so that I can keep feeling that I do belong - to you and yours and that in proper context, you and yours belong to me. Then I can call you and say goodnight - as I mean it, with warmth and affection always and without even any misgiving. I have been [page 2] somewhat at loose ends for a couple of weeks, as I’ve told you and you have helped me keep my perspective.
I’ve tried to think out the reasons for the way I’ve been feeling, and, I think, that I’m beginning to understand - because of your directness and enthusiasm and warmth!
Destructive influences have included the following: discovering that, with all their sweetness and loyalty to me, Carol and Reggie Molony have been exerting subtle pressure on me to relinquish my little place in Menlo Park - and there’s no one I’d rather see it go to than to them - unless I can discover some way to convert its value at least to something that will help your mom and your little brothers! If the house were big enough - which it definitely isn’t - and if it were not located in a place where new highway developments may take it away from me - there’s nothing I’d rather do or would do quicker than to deed it to your mom - in entirety and once and for all end her problem of uncertainty [page 3] about a place to live! Maybe I can still let carol and Reggie buy it as they wish - knowing the problems that surround it and see that the payments they make can help your mom! I’m a thinkin’ and tryin’ and maybe there’ll be a way. I could just sell it outright to a real estate dealer - and several have tried to buy it but the Federal Income tax law would require that I reinvest what I get for it - within a year, I think - in more real estate or a heavy tax would be laid on the money and I’d lose a big chunk of the value received.
Other destructive influences have included (2) leaving me out of departmental committees and conferences because legally when I’m retired I’ll no longer have any status in this connection. (3) The law that prohibits a retired professor from accepting any job in any publicly supported educational institution. (4) congratulations -sincere enough - by various colleagues because I’m “getting out of the rat race” when I’ve said, like Zorba, I want to live a thousand years and continue to be engaged in working with the younger minds in the solving of human problems, and in the absorbing as much as possible of the continuing quickness of human [?] of which I never have enough and for which I’m always hungry. But also, like Zorba, “I don’t have the time left to take everything the easy way. I’ve got to do some hurrying and continue to move as fast as I can so long as I don’t punish myself.” And believe me, darling, I want to keep you as the symbol and the driving force for everything good that I can do.
I told Dr. Clark, in my letter of resignation (from the job - not the spirit) that I wasn’t going to disappear from the educational scene. Want to stay around and continue to be an inspiration and an initiant! But I do need to feel that to you, I belong and to your family - your mom, and your brothers and sister, I belong, so help me do that so no one can ever make me doubt it. I feel a distinct loss of loyalty in Dorothy Williams and I feel that Louise De Soto has destroyed the bond that once existed there - so I do need you and all that you stand for. This is why I need a few hours to talk things over with [page 4] you - sometime before too long. I want to feel so sure of myself and the ties (that I know I must continually re-earn) with you and yours that I’ll feel that I’m a part of a colony of beauty and faith and courage and steadfastness on an island of integrity and goodness so firm that nothing will ever shake it.
I should thank you at this point for the fundamental goodness and kindness that are you, you, you because of the compassion you have shown for my friend Charlotte Chamberlin in Oregon whom you’ve never seen, when you admonished me not to be hard on her for I had nothing to lose by showing kindness. I can’t solve her problems for her. She must build some strength of her own - yet I don’t see how I can tell her what I must tell her without hurting her somewhat. She believes I can work miracles for her and I can’t at all - and yet you are the one that shines forth with compassion and tells me to be as kindly and as thoughtful toward her as possible. For this, again, I am grateful and appreciative.
Your little tribute via “the dolomites” lies on the table before me as I write. I treasure it and all other jewels of your personality that you have given to me since we got acquainted. So now you are a part of me - as you are so wont to say of me in relation to others with whom I have ties - and if that part were ever taken from me, I should be utterly desolate.
Then, I’m afraid, I’d not measure up to Zorba the Greek. Thanks, darling for letting me write to you as you have and for reading this far as I believe you have. With as much love as I am capable to anyone - Carl.
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
