The Colorado man who left a cryptic note about death will be arraigned today on property damage and firearm violations after his frightening shooting spree on the White House Saturday. The gun man, 26-year-old Francisco Martin Duran, remained silent at D.C.’s Central Cellblock, his motives still a mystery. The note he left spoke of affairs if he were to die, similar to a will than a suicide note. The note contained no threat against President Clinton.
Israel will being reopening Gaza Strip border crossings this week that were previously sealed after the deadly bombing of a Tel Aviv bus, the prime minister said Sunday. Yitzhak Rabin met with PLO leader Yasser Arafat on Sunday before the opening of a Middle East summit aimed at promoting economic development in the region.
Highs in the mid-80s with scattered thunderstorms later; tonight clear and cool with lows near 50. Currently it’s 63 degrees.
During that first semester my freshman year I always seemed to be on the move on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I was up and out of bed in Bowman Hall before 6:00, at the Communication Building an hour before my newscast as 7:00, at the Public Health Building at 8:00 for my first class of the day, and then I had to scoot over to the Business & Economics Building (or the “Bebe”) for a course on United States History at 9:00.
I remember thinking at the time that the schedule must be wrong – why was my history class in the business building? No, the schedule was correct (as usual). Eventually I was able to discern that the history department had no building of their own and was regulated to the basement of one of the academic classroom buildings, and the business building was used because it had a vacant auditorium at this hour of the day. The walk from the Health Building was short and I stumbled into the auditorium my first day surprised at the size of the class. It was easiest the largest class I had that semester.
Leading the hour-long discussion on American History (from its earliest perceived beginnings to 11:59 a.m. on Monday, May 25, 1863) was one of the most colorful and popular professors on campus, Henry Varvas. It was hard to say what made him so popular. He had taught on campus for twenty-some years, had published a couple hundred articles on various historic people and events, and despite his high intellect was known as a mildly easy grader. That is until he came across a student-penned essay on a test that smacked of stupidity; this set him off which resulted in stricter grading on the remainder of the exams.
One quirk of Dr. Varvas was his distinct way of walking – he had a somewhat comical bounce in every other step. Some may have laughed and thought this was all for show, but it wasn’t long before he explained the reason: he had lost a leg to cancer. He had made great strides in using his prosthetic leg (pun intended and, in fact, his words) but did not appreciate people recognizing him only because of his gait. He told the story of a woman approaching him while shopping and gushing that she had heard about how great an instructor he was from her husband who was a student “a while back.” Varvas looked at her calmly and asked how she knew he was in fact who she thought he was. The woman confessed it was because of the way he walked. This evidently pissed him off not just at the time of the story but when he told us the tale in class – he raised his voice and acted insulted with us in the audience. It seemed a bit much to get sore about but I don’t think anyone felt the urge to argue with him.
The one nice thing about Varvas’ class was that he made it no secret in that first session that he didn’t meet Friday; in layman’s terms that meant he didn’t hold class, have office hours, or as many believed even venture from his home to the campus. That, my friends, is called tenure. To make up for the required third hour each week Varvas had setup what he called “discussion sessions” supervised by his two teaching assistants (T.A.) (real names forgotten but let’s call them Rael and Brandine). These “discussions” were equated to “lab credit,” which meant the group of undergrads met once a week to take silly little quizzes about what we learned in class. Fortunately my “lab” was right after class on Wednesday and so I and a few others followed Rael and Brandine across campus to the makeshift history department headquarters. Neither T.A. seemed as intelligent as Varvas but they tried to explain some of the topics in a “not-as-hoity-toity” manner.
A year later, when I was a sophomore and involved more heavily in radio news, I spotted Dr. Varvas’ name on the list of experts the university had created. The directory served to connect the media or other interested parties with subject matter experts for commentary or analysis on varying subjects. Though his name was part of the directory, Dr. Varvas was not too keen on hearing his voice transmitted...that day or the other few times I tried to get his insight on something in the news.
I always found it odd that he couldn’t keep quiet in class yet he refused his voice on the radio.
Maybe he had microphone trepidations, too.
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History 101
(Mark Cardenas/Robert Charles/Charles Neville/Mark Smith)
Songcatchers
From the album Dreaming in Color
1994