My friend Patty’s dad, well-respected developmental psychologist Harold Stevenson, passed away earlier this summer, after battling Alzheimer’s for several years. Linette and I spent this afternoon with his family, friends and colleagues at the University of Michigan, recounting his various achievements, sharing anecdotes, and generally celebrating his life. It was one of the most beautiful events I have ever had the opportunity to witness, and, without a doubt, it was the most positive, moving celebration of a person’s life after passing that I have ever been a part of.

Here, for the purposes of context, is a clip from his obituary that ran in the Washington Post :

Harold W. Stevenson, 80, a developmental psychologist whose comprehensive studies in the 1980s showed that schoolchildren in Asia outperformed American children often because they simply worked harder, died of pneumonia July 8 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif.

Dr. Stevenson’s surveys for the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan were the first to show that from their earliest school years, U.S. children lagged behind students in Japan and Taiwan in reading and math. The reasons cited were multiple, but one finding stood out: U.S. kindergartners, first-graders and fifth-graders did less homework, spent fewer school hours studying and wasted more classroom time.

“The Japanese and Chinese believe that people are basically the same and that the difference between success and failure lies in how hard you work,” Dr. Stevenson said in 1987. “Americans give more importance to native ability, so they have less incentive to work hard in school”…

By many accounts, Dr. Stevenson was a man who found learning fascinating and joyful. One of his daughters, Janet B. Zimmerman of Plymouth, Mich., said that his enthusiasm for learning was infectious and that she vividly recalled him helping her with homework.

“Whenever we were stuck in any subject, he would gladly step forward and, with extreme patience, try to help us understand,” she said. He would help his children look at problems in multiple ways, regarding mathematics as a series of puzzles to solve, she said.

He repeatedly edited his own work and speeches to make his points as clearly as possible, she said. A colleague of his told her of a time when he walked into a lecture hall where Dr. Stevenson was giving a speech. Behind the rapt audience stood a janitor who was just as fascinated, he said. The next day, the colleague overheard the janitor describing what he had learned to the rest of the custodial staff. That, Zimmerman said, was the type of communication her father sought. “He would present with equal enthusiasm to custodial staff, to me as a 10-year-old or to the most studious graduate student,” she said.

I didn’t know Dr. Stevenson personally, so I won’t attempt to tell his whole story here, but I did want to just mention a few of the impressions that were left with me, as I sat there and listened to over a dozen people talk about his amazing life, and the significant influence he’d been on them. The portrait that was painted was one of a brilliant, modest, unstoppably energetic man who remained curious his entire life as to how children learn and develop. And, perhaps more importantly, of a man who, despite the demands of his career, always had time for his friends and family.

I couldn’t keep from crying toward the end. After two hours of hearing people talk about how he, in his straightforward and truly genuine way, had changed their lives (often by encouraging them to follow their passion in their research, and then finding the grant money to make it possible), I was on the verge of tearing up. And then, when my friend Patty and her sister stepped onto the podium (the same podium from which her father had lectured many times) to sing his favorite song, Tom Paxton’s “Ramblin’ Boy,” I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. It was one of the saddest, most beautiful things, I had ever seen. When they got to the last verse, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.

“He left me here, to ramble on
My ramblin’ pal, is dead and gone
If when we die, we go somewhere
I’ll bet you a dollar, he’s ramblin’ there.”

But, as embarrassing as it is to say this, in spite of feeling very happy for Dr. Stevenson that he’d led such a truly amazing life (from his early days in a one-room Wyoming schoolhouse, to his time in the Navy during the war, to his opening of one of the country’s first racially integrated nursery schools, to his being one of the first American scholars into China in 1973, to his influence over the US education debate), a lot of what I was thinking had to do with myself. “Not only wouldn’t I,” I thought, “be able to fill up an auditorium like this, if I were to pass away right now, but I very seriously doubt my relatives could dredge up anyone who could say that I’d been responsible for positively shaping their life, let alone that I’d helped to redefine and entire area of academic research.” And I’m not just feeling sorry for myself… or fishing for compliments. Several people I spoke with afterward were having the same thoughts. It was painfully obvious to us all that very few people could match the life led by Dr. Stevenson. Most of us, I think, would be happy to just come close on the personal front, having four happy, healthy kids (and seven grandkids) and a reputation for being a good, caring man who did his best to make the world a better place.

I think we’d all like to achieve something like what he did professionally though, to know that what we did mattered, and to know that people respected us… He helped people to achieve their dreams, and what he did will continue to ripple through society for generations to come… His kids talked of a warm, loving father who never made them feel as though they came second… His relationship with his wife was talked about as though it were one of the greatest romances of all times… He was, by all accounts, kind, optimistic, encouraging, and inquisitive – someone who, it seemed, was absolutely clear as to what he was meant to do.

Linette, and I have been talking about Dr. Stevenson since this afternoon. We were both profoundly impacted by what we saw and heard at the memorial service, but she, I think, has a better, healthier take on it than I do. Unlike me, she isn’t just holding up his life as a foil in front of which to view the inadequacies of her own life thus far. She’s thinking about his life as an example of what can be achieved, and what we can still do with our time here. (I’m trying to coax my obsessive mind in that direction, but it’s difficult.)

Linette and I haven’t written out our wills yet, but, in case the courts would accept my wishes as communicated via blog, I would like to not have a funeral. Having sat though several, and now having experienced a memorial service that came some time after an individual’s passing, I can say with absolute certainty that I’d prefer to let some time pass. (It’s been my experience that very little of meaning can be said about a person’s life in the immediate wake of their passing.) When I go, I want to be cremated, and, if my family wants, I’d like them to have some kind of ceremony where they do something with my ashes. (I’ll probably offer some suggestions, but nothing comes to mind right now.) Then, after a few months, if people are so inclined, I’d like to have some kind of get-together… Hopefully, I will have done something of some significance by then. And, hopefully Clementine can sing.