A Man Whose Life Cries Out For a Biography

So Wifey and I took 2 couples out to dinner last night: my former Religion profs Steve and Dan, and their wives Mary and Phyllis. We all met in 1980, when Steve and Dan were young academic Turks, recruited to the U by the then Chair, Jim Ash. The 6 of us drank malbec and caught up on family and UM news. Steve and Mary are now grandparents, and Steve is retiring next year and moving to the D.C. area to be close to his new grandson. And then they told me some sad news: 2 former profs in the Department, Olga Hutchingson, and Jim Ash, had died. Olga was a nice woman --I took Women and Religion with her, and remember her most for a faculty'student softball game I organized, which the baseball team allowed us to play on Mark Light Field. Poor Olga fell and broke her leg -- badly. She spent the whole year on crutches. She left UM for FIU, retired, and died of a heart ailment -- she was in her early 70s. Jim Ash -- now HE was a larger than life character. His life was the type Carl Hiassen talks about when complaining about being a Miami novelist: the stuff that really happens here is far weirder than what a novelist can conjure up. Jim was a Texan -- came to UM and spoke like an old school preacher. He quickly rose to Dean of the college, and instituted some major changes. He convinced the president, Tad Foote, to let the U get smaller and smarter. He instituted Residential Colleges, where faculty would move to dorms with students. Jim left UM to become president of Whittier College -- Nixon's alma mater. Apparently he did well there, too. I ran into him in the lobby of the Bevely Hills Peninsula -- he was there with a gentleman -- and we caught up about the old days. He was getting ready to leave his position to become a venture capitalist with some rich Saudis -- former Whittier students. And so there is the really strange stuff: though Jim was a minister, married to Pat, who got a law degree at UM, and bore 2 daughters, Jim was a closeted gay. He also returned to academics as president of Sierra Nevada College near Reno, and while there was arrested in a motel room with a teenaged fellow -- both doing crystal meth. Jim's life spiraled down from there -- multiple arrests, and life in a halfway shelter. Pat divorced him, and ended up with -- yes -- a woman. The woman was a UM Music professor -- apparently they were lovers while Jim was a big shot in Miami. My friends Barry and Eric remember Jim well. Eric and I went on a bus tour with him after we graduated in '83. We drove to Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, and West Palm -- meeting with local honors students to recruit them to the new, smarter UM. Jim would pick out the best restaurants and take our whole group to amazing dinners in each city. This was the first time I visited Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa --Eric seems to remember the bill -- and this was 1983, was over $100 per person. Jim was the main speaker at these events -- and I still remember his preacher talks, about how an education must be viforous and diverse. The trip worked -- UM started getting sharper kids, and still does. I was an honors student in '79 --given a half tuition scholarship. My grades and scores wouldn't even get me into UM these days --and Jim Ash deserves a lot of the credit for that. Instead -- he died a broken, lost man, at 68 -- a bizarre riches to rags story. The 6 of us toasted him last night. He was truly a Readers Digenst Unforgettable Character to me, a young undergraduate. Ah, Miami. It's never boring here...