Ross M. Durham, 84, of Lookout Mountain, Georgia, passed away on Thursday, July 30, 2015.
His daughter wrote, "Two words, spoken by my sister Crystal. She said them gently, as gently as snow falls on a windless winter night. I was struck though, hard, and my hands went to my face covering my mouth. Despite the fact that the family had been expecting it for days, it startled me. "Dad died." There have been no tears since I heard those words, but they will come. I can feel them, lurking, waiting for the dam to break. Dad went into the hospital a week ago and we all knew he wouldn't be coming back home.
"It's strange, my emotions surrounding that situation broke through in moments I hadn't anticipated. Not when I saw him as he inched toward that threshold we all must cross. It hurt to see him make this journey, deeply, profoundly, thoroughly. But no tears. I was at work last week and let my boss know what was going on and that started a chain of compassion that soon ringed itself around me. I was leaving after a shift to go to the hospital and just paused to thank coworkers for their support and the words caught in my throat. I couldn't speak. That was the first leak in the dam.
"There is a picture in one of our family photo albums of my Dad sitting on a hillside. He's about forty and he's pointing at something off-camera. We had a little thing we did in those days, putting captions to pictures and I wrote one for this photo. It says, "Ross Durham points out a blatant inconsistency." It's generally agreed that this captures my father's personality. He was a research scientist for many years and then moved on to teaching advanced biology classes at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A very smart man. Blatant inconsistencies never had much of a chance around him.
"You might think that such a man was a no-nonsense kind of guy. But my Dad loved nonsense. Though his own humor tended toward dry, he loved slapstick. A good pratfall could really crack him up. Dad was always ready for a good joke and had a ton of them in his head, right next to the stuff detailing the latest brain research from the New England Journal of Medicine.
"I want to give you something to think about. It has to do with legacy. Someone passes and it's just sort of natural to think about it. My Dad's legacy? Well, he put out a number of respected scientific papers with titles somewhat ungainly for us laymen. Things having to do with synaptic responses to stimulus in the brains of adult rabbits. Then there's his work as a teacher. It's a popular meme that those that can't do, teach. That's such a load of hooey.
"My Dad taught anatomy and physiology courses to those that would eventually become nurses and doctors. He was a hard ass, refusing to grade on a curve. We're dealing with people's lives here and you either knew the material or you didn't and as far as he was concerned, when dealing with life or death situations, you had to know what the hell you were doing. If you didn't, he failed you, period. If one of those nurses he taught, or one of those doctors, saved a life, my Dad's fingerprint was on that life. He taught hundreds of students over the years. Take just one young person whose life was saved by a nurse who knew what she was doing because my Dad insisted that she should, just one. That one person goes on to get married and have kids. Then those kids grow up and they have children. That's a whole thread of humanity with my Dad's fingerprint on it. I think it's safe to say there are many such threads. That is my father's legacy.
"We associate great accomplishments with works of art, vast fortunes accumulated, heroism on a battlefield and international fame. Often it's not at all inappropriate that we do so. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of life great accomplishments are easily overlooked. That doesn't make them any less real though. Dad's accomplishments are as real as dirt, as real as air, as real as carbon, one of the basic building blocks of life. His accomplishments play in parks, sing to themselves and laugh out loud every single day.
"So, as I said previously, I want you to think about all this. My Dad was a great teacher, and like so many great teachers he doesn't get the credit he deserves. Not that he ever asked for such credit. But I'm asking. I'm asking for him and all the other great teachers out there who see to the nuts and bolts of life.
"My Dad is, and always has been, my hero. And he's a pretty darned good one."
In honor of his request there will be no formal viewing or services.
Companion Funeral Home has charge of the arrangements.