Fire and Rain

By Bobby Neal Winters

Her name was Teresa Massa, but I called her Mother Teresa, and she thought that it was funny.

There are people on Earth whose job it is to clean up messes that other people have made.  They go by different names in different places. The mob calls them “cleaners”; many businesses call them HR.  When I was president of the university chapter of the KNEA, I called them the “Men in Black.”  This in spite of the fact that the one in charge was a woman.

I called them the “Men in Black” after the movie.  According to the movie, there are a lot of things going on in the world that need to be taken care of that the vast bulk of the people of the world are better off not knowing.  The same is true at any big organization including the university.

Mother Teresa was in charge of the “Men in Black” back in the day and that day was almost 20 years ago.

Mother Teresa took a shine to me. 

I am a person who does not like conflict.  I have an accommodating personality type.  I like to make people happy.  I will twist myself into a pretzel to make people happy. (Until I get to my breaking point, and then I am DONE. But that is a story for another day.) As I said, I got to know Mother Teresa as union president during a time of conflict.  When I went to the “dark side” in administration afterwards, she took me under her wing and taught me some administrative basics.

We would meet in her office, drink our respective hot beverages, and talk.  She told stories of her time at the university.  She talked about the characters she had known.  She talked about personalities she had met.

She knew the people from the Age of Giants.  Perhaps she was a giant herself.  Though the Greeks spoke of an age of giants--the Titans--this was followed by an age of gods.  Perhaps Mother Teresa belonged to that latter age.  Time will tell.

From her I learned there are two sides--at least two sides--to history.  I’ve come to call them the PR side and the HR side.

The PR side is what you see in the papers. It is glossy and smells like perfume.  Events progress neatly from A to B to C and all the way to a glorious Z without any friction.  The PR side is boring.

Then there is the HR side. There is not a bit of gloss to the HR side. I’m not going to say what it smells like, but it’s not perfume. Earthier than that. Let’s say it smells like un-painted reality.

The HR side is Truth, and I meant that capital “T”.

Mother Teresa had seen the dirt and smelled the smells, and she still loved the university.  

She loved learning.

She loved history and art.  She loved conversation about cultures and religions.  She reached out an open and helpful hand to our teachers from foreign countries and learned about them.

She was an Okie, just like me. She was of the first generation in her family to go to college, just like me.  In her retirement, she and her husband Richard established a scholarship for First Generation students. 

She was particularly interested in the students who were barely making it.  They were financially on the edge and they needed the help.  When she and Richard first established the scholarship, there would be a luncheon where she gathered the recipients together to meet them.  It made them feel special.

Time took a toll.

Richard’s health began to fail, and he wouldn’t be able to attend.  Then he passed.  Time exacted a toll on Mother Teresa as well.

She had treated my wife and me to a nice lunch at the 609 Club in Joplin a few years ago.  She’d had her 7&7.  I’d always intended to reciprocate, but time, events, life didn’t cooperate.

Then I got an email from our mutual friends in Advancement: Mother Teresa was ill and wasn’t going to make it.

Then word came that she had passed.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again.

May I be as good a help to others as she was to me.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.