我的几位“叔伯辈”美国研究生同学
That I named my company Beijing St. John's Education Consulting Company is no accident. It is so named to honor St. John's College (MD), my alma mater, and St. John's University (NY), co-founder Eric's graduate school, two namesake institutions that in a way shaped who we are today. In so doing, we also credit our start to our formative years in the US.
two Johnnies at
New York Public Library, August 2014
Institutions are abstract, however. Looking back, it is the people you encountered that matter the most. I have expressed my gratitude to the tutors and peers I befriended in a toast speech. To this day, I sometimes still think of some of them. Lately, a Weibo tweet by Fang Kecheng, a journalism professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, triggered my memories of several classmates who had reached an age at which many of their contemporaries have stopped working.
In this (and one subsequent) post, I will portray a few interesting souls who made my graduate life more memorable.
a lifelong flutist and learner
First, Peggy Bair, the first classmate who said hi to me on the orientation day. Even before she said anything, I could feel her friendliness through her big, genuine smiles. She turned out a hearty chatter, but there were times when she preferred to express herself in something other than language, something more sublime: music.
Born and bred in West Virginia, Peggy graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of music degree in performance from the University of West Virginia. The following thirty years saw her perform as principal flutist at the U.S. Navy Band, fluting into her early 50s, retiring in 2009 with the rank of master chief petty officer, the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank in the United States Navy.
She retired, but she never stopped performing. She performed with the Bellini Ensemble. She performed with the Virginia Grand Military Band. She, too, performed with a sibling band: the United States Air Force Band.
Neither did Peggy stop learning. Her curiosity about the humanities brought her back to the Great Books Program, where I was fortunate to share many a seminar with her. She was a serious thinker, affable interlocutor, and witty speaker. Her exploratory questions led many down the trails of discovery of some of the hardest questions. When death-like silence persisted, her quick witted sense of humor and signature use of relevant idioms and sayings would crack up the whole class.
Despite that Peggy was about my father's age, we bonded over our shared love of language and storytelling. A few times she would show up 40 minutes before classes started, and we would grab coffee for a good chat. She had opted for DINK ("double income, no kids") as a way of life and shared every bit of her love and passion with her husband Aaron. I would honestly tell her what I liked and disliked about her country. If I noted down idiomatic phrases that I missed in seminars, she would always help me out.
The bond we forged was abruptly severed on September 25th, 2016, when complications from stem cell transplant treatment of lymphoma got the better of Peggy. The world went silent. But in my heart, she always had a place, like her cabin in picturesque Maine, the flute always piping.
孟庆伟 Justin
个人微信 ID：justinqmeng
现象级英语联合创始人
《经济学人》11 年研究者
雅思写作 8 分，口语 8 分
题图：2013 年 5 月摄于美国马里兰州安纳波利斯圣约翰学院 Mellon Hall
摄影师：Peggy Bair
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