Friday, September 16, 2011

Tha Artivist Salutes Dean McLeod (7/26/1944 - 9/6/2011)

Video: Dean James E. McLeod Tribute 
Tha Artivist Salutes Dean McLeod
The Scholar & Tha Artivist
Ervin Summer Orientation Program For Fall Semester (2009)


Dean James Earl McLeod
7/26/1944-9/6/2011


“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
~Albert Pine


"Know that you are valued by not how much money you make, titles that are bestowed or what you own but rather by how many lives you have touched and enriched with your presence, passions and talents which are priceless on their own…One ♥!"~r2c2h2


On Tuesday afternoon of September 6, 2011, when I just learned that my mentor made his transition, words at that moment could not do justice on how I felt about the one and only Dean James Earl McLeod…
Although he lost his battle with the Big C, he won his place of honor alongside the Big G…

Although he operated at an elite institution, Dean McLeod was more inclusive than exclusive…He had a way of bringing everyone together with his quiet dignity and humble demeanor…He was the glue that held bonds together, the mortar that cemented bricks to create institutions of excellence and the soil that made new growth and bountiful harvests possible…He was more interested in creating relationships than collecting assets…

What I loved about Dean McLeod was that he accepted people for who they were and where they were at and not necessarily what he, the John B. Ervin Scholars Program, Wash U., nor society wanted them to be…He had a genuine love of people and all of their quirks as you will…I personally know that I am not everyone’s cookie cutter or cup of tea representation of what an Ervin should be…I am not necessarily the one they would send out to recruit other potential Ervins like me per se, but Dean McLeod had a genius for finding value where others just found trouble, difficulty or a waste of time…





A great example of this was when I introduced Dean McLeod back in 2004 at my mom’s annual forum on college preparation and community service…At a mega church in Memphis with his wife, my mom, my beloved high school art teacher, her art students and others present I said the following in my speech:

“A wise man once told me that he rather be a smart nigger than a dumb nigger because he will be a dead nigger one day anyway…Ladies and gentleman, scholars and laymen I now have the pleasure of giving you Dean McLeod, a truly smart nigger.”

The crowd seemed to explode in uneasy nervous laughter and applause…But the Dean in his dignified swagger and cool reserved demeanor without missing a beat embraced me and when he got to the podium to speak did not distance himself from nor berate me for my immature roast like introduction but instead told everyone that I was one of their exceptional students now alums and that Wash U. and The John B. Ervin Scholars program believe in a student’s right to fully express themselves and to maximize their potential…Wow…That was Dean McLeod, taking lemon cars and turning them into Bentleys…

In terms of  my tenure at the art school in the university there was a struggle concerning ideology, identity and application between me and the powers that be. I was known as ‘Mr. Unteachable’ by several art professors and administrators not because I could not learn, but because I would constantly question what I was learning and would not always do as I was told.  What would be called critical thinking in more enlightened circles was dismissed as just plain stubbornness and being difficult.

Also there was a cultural clash of sorts. There were few Black students and even fewer Black faculty in the art school. On many occasions I often find myself the only person of color in the classroom. I also often found myself the lone African American male (there were only four other African American males I can successfully recall during my entire tenure there with another one successfully passing for white)…There was hardly any color unless painted on canvas…Already possessing a unique signature artistic style (something I was told I shouldn’t have had at this point in my development) and my penchant for drawing Black people only made me stand out more...I was labeled defiant or a rabble rouser even before I began…

I can vividly recall my freshman year being told by a prominent donor of a prominent scholarship of the School of Art @ The Scholar In The Arts Banquet that Gen. Nathan Bedford was his hero (Confederate Civil War Hero, prominent slave trader and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who is buried in a park named in his honor in my hometown of Memphis)…In his own graciously subtle racist way he was letting me know what time it was and where I was at as it related to an institution that practiced de facto racism, which is basically every institute that thrives in a white power system in this country.
At first I was hesitant to participate or say anything in the class. I felt that they thought my opinions represented an entire monolithic group of people which is truly absurd. However, as time progressed I grew more confident in myself as an individual to speak and stand up for myself.

Other times it seems like I was treated as the invisible man in the classroom. One occasion during a critique I stated something substantive but the professor did not mind my input and she stated a similar observation after me, assuming that she was the first to acknowledge it. Several of my peers corrected her and gave me my proper credit. In spite of these obstacles I was able to find allies in both the administration and faculty as well as among my peers, eventually winning their respect and admiration.

Dean McLeod in his own quiet diplomatic and adroit manner helped me get through these times. I would occasionally update him on how things were going. Every so often I came to his office as it was to report my recent clashes with the art school professors.  Being an artist, Dean McLeod and his office was a study in true contrast, although his office was like navigating through an academic labyrinth of papers, calendar dates and books, the nattily dressed man with the towering intellect, the aerodynamic fro and big heart was never hard to find…Never once did he tell me that it was all in my head and I needed to toughen up. He acutely knew of the historic problems and love-hate relationship some of the Black art students in general and the Ervin art scholars in particular have had with the art school and since he was a lover of art (he served on the St. Louis Art Museum board) I have no doubt he did things behind the scenes to advocate for me.  I could tell a difference how was treated by art professors after having a quick heart to heart with Dean McLeod.

By the end of my tenure I was able to organize my first professional one man art show at a venerable venue with a very well attended opening despite the inclement weather.  The show even got positively reviewed by one of the top art critics in the region, something that even many of my art professors were not able to receive or achieve. Many students from the university were able to attend because I successfully convinced university officials via Dean Adrienne Glore to lend their shuttle transportation services to the cause.

For my efforts I graduated the art school with top honors, receiving the first ever Margo Trump Award for outstanding graduating art school senior. The award was named after my dear friend and sympathetic supporter who was an administrator at the art school who passed away the fall semester of my senior year after a short bout with an illness from an art school related freak injury (she felled into an uncovered manhole during a cigarette break).  I was also a co-recipient of the university’s Langston Hughes Award for my art achievements and activism in preserving and promoting African American heritage and history. If it wasn’t for people like Dean McLeod showing concern and support I might not have gotten through the storm…

Dean McLeod was an avid supporter of my art. He and his wife Clara invested in me and my art when they purchased a drawing of mine for $300 when I was just an undergrad. This was after Clara, who was my boss at the Earth & Planetary Sciences Library because of a work study I was granted by Dean McLeod, caught me sleeping and snoring loudly on the job in the attic in an incident that is quickly becoming infamous in Ervin lore (in a preemptive act I dismissed my own self from the work study telling my former boss that, as she gleefully recalled last weekend after the funeral services for her husband, “I might as well quit because you will have to fire me anyway…”)…He also attended my first major art exhibition after graduation at the Sheldon Jazz Art Gallery in 2003 and told me how proud he was of my achievements.  Every so often he would inquire about the progress of my art career and work and encouraged me to continue to do it.  So it was a truly full circle cathartic feeling last week to have had my latest major art exhibition open on the day of his wake and the day before his funeral…That week was both a homecoming for me and a homegoing for him…

It was barely less than 20 days before he passed when I last saw Dean McLeod alive but not well on my annual pilgrimage to the Ervin Summer Orientation Program…For the past several years the nucleus of activity for the orientation program has been centered at the Drury Plaza Hotel @ the Arch in downtown St. Louis…He was at the time dealing with the effects of his latest rounds of chemotherapy treatment…He was noticeably thinner, frail and tired but his spirits were high and willing even when his body wasn’t…Also due to his high fever and weakened immune system he wasn’t as accessible as in Ervin Orientation Programs past…I heard that he barely got through his famous and always ‘edutaining’ “Habits of Achievement” presentation…

The John B. Ervin Orientation program was a Dean McLeod production through and through…He was a true micro-manager’s micro-manager down to the very last detail…However, you can tell the difference of the feel of the program this year…Some things ran a little behind schedule and the rooming arrangements at least in my case were a little off and awkward…Sure there was enthusiasm and smiles as usual, but there was almost an ominous feeling in the air, a sensing of a true changing of the guard as if we were on a death watch at the Vatican awaiting the dreaded news of the passing of an influential pope as well as the anxiety of what awaited us all in the next transition or phase of this new venture…

I caught Dean McLeod on the 4th floor Saturday afternoon on August 20 between sessions resting on a bench awaiting the elevator to go to his room…I talked to him and told him how glad I was to see him…He asked about my family, my mom and sister in particular, and told me to give them his love…I inquire the same about his fam in particular his daughter who was a Spelman grad making her own way down in Atlanta…I also shared with Dean that I will be pursuing my doctorate in education and told him that although it took me a decade that the message was received…He thanked me and told me in his usual way, “no sir you had it in you all along, it was your choice to do and pursue”…I then took my leave from the great man and went about my business having no clue that our mortal mentor-mentee relationship ended at that moment…Somehow I knew that would be my last time seeing my beloved mentor in living flesh, but I did not know the end would come so soon, no one did…
 
Dean McLeod was about celebrating life, people and relationships. His living legacy, if we continue to embrace that, should reflect that. At the end of an  Ervin 20th Planning Session in June 2006, me and Dean McLeod had a heart to heart talk…I told him that I did not always feel welcomed nor wanted during my tenure at Wash U. and that it was a Jekyll & Hyde relationship. With sage like clarity he countered, “No sir it’s not about buildings, it’s about people.” He was right otherwise why would I come back? Like he use to tell me ‘it’s not him, it’s bigger than him’…

In 2009, during the wrap up of the orientation program and before I took my pic with him, I recommended to Dean McLeod that he record his now famous and beyond category “Habits of Achievement” speech for posterity…This speech I told him should be turned into a NY Times Bestseller and he could make a fortune doing the motivational speaker circuit…I asked him how else could we pay homage and do justice to such a major hallmark of inspiration for us and relay its impact to the future generations of scholars???  And he looked at me and without missing a beat humbly said, “no sir that speech/presentation is for the here and now and for the folks in the room who are present to hear it”…That was Dean McLeod, the man who ‘overstood’ the value of being in the moment and for connecting with folks in the fierce urgency of now…He also was a man who ‘overstood’ the need for each and every generation to not get caught in the confines of straitjacket traditionalism and for us as individuals as well as a collective to find our mode of freely expressing timeless principles in innovative ways on our own terms…

Now I feel looking back that one reason he did not record was because he did not want us to become comfortably complacent and let his invaluable words of wisdom and call to action fall on deaf and indifferent ears as part of some stale albeit well meaning idol worshipping routine...He wanted us to breathe life into the words he spoke by living those principalities…You can tell the value of a tree by the fruit it bears and not by what it says…Dean McLeod was ingenious ‘til the end and beyond the grave… 

Dean McLeod was and is a great man because he was willing to serve and give others the best that he had while being used for a purpose greater than himself…True greatness can be selfless while success can be selfish…Both Dean McLeod and John B. Ervin died in the line of duty while selflessly serving others…They parlayed their successful empirical positions into eternal praise and goodwill…To me this proves that what these great men did was more than just a job or a profession, it was a calling that one fully committed to and in some occasions willingly sacrifice one’s life for…

This man was one of the few who I have had the honor to call a true mentor and father figure and better yet a true friend not just in good times but also in the bad and the indifferent times…He will be missed by so many but his spirit shall live on through all of those he personally touched as well as through those who we, his living legacy, will continue to touch…My heart goes out to his beautiful wife in spirit Sis. Clara and his wonderful daughter, Sis. Sara, and the rest of his friends and family…One love!

Ervinly and WUlistically yours,
Bro. Ron aka R2C2H2 Tha Artivist
WU/ Ervin Class Of 2002

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