ELEGY FOR MR. SHICKLE

Paul's memorial service yesterday went very well. It was hard to get the word out given that many people - both former colleagues and students - were away because of summer plans but people were still able to make it out. After the service, people gathered in front of the church and swapped stories about Mr. Shickle for quite a while.

I began writing the following as a eulogy but as it ended up, eulogies weren't allowed as per church policy so we simply handed them out to people as they came in. It's meant to double as both tribute and biography and contains more of Mr. Shickle's personal history than was included in the San Marino Tribune obituary that ran.
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>Elegy For Paul E. Shickle

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Brooks Adams

Though I took Latin with Mr. Shickle for four years, I wouldn’t be able to write even this sentence in Latin. However, my failure to do so is no reflection on Mr. Shickle’s abilities as a teacher (just my failings as a foreign language student). Yet, even if I have long forgotten how to conjugate “amo,” I know that, in no small way, what I have done in my life – what I have yet to do –traces back to the time I spent in his classroom, in his presence.

* * *

I always knew that Mr. Shickle was an important figure in my teenage years but it’s only with the clarity of hindsight that I’ve appreciated how formative a force he was in my life as a young person. I know I’m not alone in saying this – a few days ago, I briefly spoke with one of his earliest students: Sandra Helms Morris. She started at SMHS when Mr. Shickle was only in his third year of teaching and not only did she have him as a teacher for four years, so did her brother after her. So did her two sons, an entire generation later. In speaking to Mr. Shickle’s remarkable involvement with and investment into students and their families, she remarked, “I never met another teacher like Mr. Shickle.”

Indeed, the time and compassion he directed in his students transcended what was expected of him as a professional. He was a fine teacher, without question, but he was also a role model, a mentor, and a friend. His was no small power. High school especially is a space fraught with the pressures of academic strain, petty social politics, and the expectation that children will some how, some way, find their way into adulthood. Into that tangled mess he shuffled - he of the gray voice and colorful scarves, the stern gaze and kind smile – and he had the remarkable ability to make you feel intelligent and capable. He offered more than just cliché platitudes and sympathetic back pats – he was a full-fledged “grown up,” a worldly man of books and life experiences, and he could see the promise that lay within his students even when their own self-perceptions were clouded in doubt or insecurity. There is nothing so powerful that you can give to a young person than the unconditional belief in their potential. I believe that was Mr. Shickle’s legacy to the hundreds of students who sat before him over the years.

This is not to say that he was a saint or teddy bear. I know from personal experience that he was an addict for gossip (not to mention menthol cigarettes) and always seemed to have a firm opinion about practically anyone he crossed paths with. In recent days, I’ve heard from students and colleagues who’ve described him as “feisty,” “a force to be reckoned with,” even “crotchety.” Many of you probably saw – the hard way – how quick he could show displeasure, wielding an ardent temper that commanded rapt attention in even the most unruly settings. However, his irritability was rarely irrational – Mr. Shickle simply had little patience to suffer fools lightly, be they disrespectful students or inattentive administrators. He was a fierce advocate for what he believed in, a quality that served him well in 32 years as a department chair, but that not-so-quiet righteousness was also what fueled his intereset in nurturing those he saw as future leaders and do-gooders. I don’t believe this was something he learned solely from his training as a teacher – I believe it also sprung from his own life experiences struggling against adversity, both internal and external.

* * *

Those who knew him well knew of his deep interest in his family’s genealogy and he spent years researching how his ancestors, the Schickels, likely came from Bavaria in the 1830s, settling in the Midwest. 100 years later and Paul Eugene Francis Xavier Shickle was born August 29, 1927 in Bloomington, IL to Benjamin Wilson Shickel and Eathel Dolores Rowe. He was the youngest of three children, brother to Elmo Wilson Shickle and Leora Zelma Shickle.

Unfortunately, I was never able to learn much about Mr. Shickle’s early childhood except that he was, from a young age, a devout and active member of the Catholic community, serving as president of his high school’s Newman Club. One can surmise that his religious pursuits also spurred interest in the Classics and when he attended Illinois State University on an academic scholarship, it’s almost certain he majored in Classics and Romance Languages.

Upon graduating, he briefly joined the seminary, specifically the Brothers of the Holy Cross order. However, soon after taking his first vows, a variety of factors, including lingering health problems he had since a child, compelled him towards a different calling. He briefly enrolled at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., intent on getting his masters in Classics and Library Sciences but again, health problems forced an early withdrawal and he moved home. When I interviewed Mr. Shickle four years ago, he told me that when he sought local teaching positions in Southern Illinois, virulent anti-Catholic prejudice made it extremely difficult to find work so he looked elsewhere.

He had family in Louisville KY and in moving out there, was able to land an assistant professorship, teaching Spanish at the newly founded Bellarmine College. However, once again, recurring health problems began to crop up and believing a change of climate would improve his condition, he joined his cousin John for a trip out West, landing him around Pasadena, CA sometime in the early ‘50s.

While still waiting for teaching opportunities to materialize, he took a job at Pasadena’s Vroman’s bookstore. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision because it brought him into contact with many of the area’s luminaries, including physicist and CalTech professor Edwin Hubble, author/educator Isabel Fisher and members of the Patton family. Though Mr. Shickle came to San Marino – a small and arguably parochial community - as a geographic and social outsider, his time at Vroman’s earned him enough good will that the still nascent San Marino High School hired him to teach Latin and honor’s English in 1956.

Soon thereafter, his health problems came out of remission and in seeking medical advice, he finally had a name for his affliction: ankylosing spondylitis, more commonly known as Marie-Strumpell’s Disease, a chronic, arthritic ailment that affects the spine. He recounted that upon receiving the diagnosis he told the doctor, “Marie-Strumpell’s Disease? I don’t want it – give it back to her!”

All good humor aside, Mr. Shickle was determined not to let his condition become dehabilitating, especially in the pursuit of his chosen profession. When he was up for tenure, the district sent him in for a check-up. An “idiot doctor” - in Mr. Shickle’s words (a phrase he seemed to deploy quite frequently over his years) - was reluctant to approve him because, in his medical opinion, “you’re not going to last as a teacher.” Mr. Shickle told me, with no small degree of defiant pride, “well, you know, I lasted 43 years.”

I believe these personal struggles – his experiences as a social outsider, his deep, abiding, and complex relationship to God and faith, and his self-awareness of his own physical frailties –help explain the depth of compassion and empathy he had for his own students’ hardships. I’ve heard from many students over the years of how Mr. Shickle would be their confidant when they were struggling with school problems, family tensions and turmoil of the most personal nature. That level of trust, though more easily given between peers, was extraordinary for teenagers to grant to an adult, authority figure but it speaks to the unique relationships Mr. Shickle forged with his students.

* * *

In researching all this biographical information, I came to a fast realization: despite having had Mr. Shickle as a teacher, every day for four years, I actually knew scant about him and his life. I never knew he was an avid collector of first-print books, having amassed thousands of books and periodicals throughout the years. I had no clue that he was a lover of animals; he had no immediate family of his own but he did leave behind a pug named Paulette and three cats (all adopted now, in case anyone was concerned).

In contrast, as many of you well know, Mr. Shickle had a near encyclopedic knowledge of of his students, even their families, that spanned over 40 years. In a sense, he wasn’t just interested in his own family’s history, he also studied the social genealogy of our community, seeking to keep abreast of our lives long after we left the high school. This may sound presumptuous and overly sentimental but I wonder if, for someone who had no children of his own, Mr. Shickle saw his students as surrogate children he helped raise and let loose unto the world.

There’s at least one thing that parenting and teaching share in common – both can be largely thankless professions where years of effort and heartache are invested in trying to make us into better people and in return, they usually only get a token gift – a silver pen that will eventually rust, an unworn gold watch buried in a closet. The Mr. Shickle I know never expected nor desired showy displays of gratitude however. I think he so carefully kept track of people’s lives because he took so much pleasure and satisfaction in the future accomplishments of his once-prodigal children.

I certainly never thanked Mr. Shickle as much as I should have, for helping shape who I am today, but I suspect the very best thanks any of his students could ever pay to this late, remarkable, beautiful man was achieve the promise that he always knew lay within us.

--Oliver Wang, SMHS 1990

* * *

Also, because I know he would be far too modest to bring any attention to himself, I want to acknowledge the amazing time and effort Philip Peng (SMHS 1989) has put in into looking after Mr. Shickle since his retirement in 1999. With a devotion that can only be described as filial, Philip took Mr. Shickle grocery shopping, kept him company, and was a constant presence at the hospital over the last month (not to mention, making sure all his pets found a home). He also coordinated all of the funeral arrangements, as per Mr. Shickle’s requests. He’s done all of this out of gratitude to what Mr. Shickle did for Philip and all his students.