There is nothing scarier than destructive winds. They are much stronger than we are – completely beyond our control – and there is an intangibility to them that makes them all the more frightening. But the damage they can do is anything but intangible, as the city of Kenosha (and Racine to a lesser extent) experienced last week. We were the unfortunate target of a savage windstorm that was actually the byproduct of an even stronger storm cell that was out over Lake Michigan, producing monstrous winds and four-inch hail. (A National Weather Service official we interviewed at the station said he had never seen a stronger storm cell in his whole career.) What we experienced on the lakeshore was the outer edge of the storm (I think maybe it’s called the wind shear) and because there was nothing between the storm and the lakeshore but open water – nothing to disrupt or disperse the winds – the wind came tearing ashore at 80, 90 and even 100 mph.
And as luck would have it, I happened to be on the Carthage campus to see and feel the storm’s onslaught first hand. The Kenosha Pops Band was rehearsing there for its 4th of July concert, so I decided to teach a couple of voice lessons earlier in the evening in my Carthage studio. As I finished up the second lesson, I decided to pop on to facebook for a moment, and it was there that I saw someone’s post about “the freaky storm in Racine” and the power going out. The forecast had been for a 20% chance of a thunderstorm but nothing to indicate anything severe – and since I was in my window-less basement studio at the time, the whole world could have ended and I wouldn’t have even known it. I called Kathy at home, and she said that all of the neighbors were outside looking at the incredibly ominous storm clouds which – contrary to the norm – were boiling in the east rather than the west… and the sky towards Carthage looked especially bad. So like a blithering idiot, I ran upstairs and outside to take a look. Incredibly, a nondescript overcast sky was now an angry, turbulent swirling of black- and the wind like nothing I’d ever felt before. The smart thing would have been for me to head right back inside and back down to the basement, but instead I stayed where I was, taking in the amazing scene and snapping a few photos as the wind become more and more ferocious. And then before my eyes I saw the actual uprooting of a tree just north of Tarble Hall – and suddenly I found myself retreating from the open parking lot to the doorway of the Johnson Arts Center, mindful that no photo was worth serious injury or worse, especially the day before our health insurance deductible was jumping to $4000. And it was there that I waited out the storm, which was actually over in a few moments.
In its wake, the storm left uprooted trees by the hundreds – more than a dozen on the Carthage campus alone – but what was almost more amazing than the uprooted trees was those trees which were snapped off and/or twisted in two by the winds. The tree pictured above is in Petrifying Springs, and when you look closely at what was done to this tree, it defies belief. What kind of winds does it take to do this to a seemingly strong, healthy tree? And why is one tree uprooted or twisted and snapped off at its base while similar trees all around it survive? Closer to home, we wondered why none of the trees in the ravine adjacent to our home were uprooted or snapped off. (Kathy said the wind was so brutal that she really feared that we might have trees crashing right into our house. ) It’s tempting to reach for a metaphor about aged trees that are no longer capable of bending with the wind – but I suspect that it’s a bit more complicated than that. All I know is that it takes just a few moments of strong, wrenching wind to destroy a tree which has been growing and thriving for a hundred years – while a small, young tree not nearly so anchored into the ground will survive unscathed. Somehow, that makes no sense to me.
Ironically, a couple of days before the storm, Carthage was shaken by the announcement that the school’s president, Dr. F. Gregory Campbell, will be retiring next summer. It was not completely surprising news- he has remarked on several occasions that he would be retiring in the not-too-distant future, and he’s just past what we commonly think of as retirement age – but still, if not surprising news it was still shocking news. Does that make any sense at all? It was a day we knew was coming, but it’s still not news for which we’re really prepared.
For a lot of people – and I’m among them – Carthage College and F. Gregory Campbell are practically inseparable. The only Carthage we really know is with President Campbell at the helm. That actually isn’t literally true with me; when I moved to Kenosha in the summer of 1986, Dr. Erno Dahl was the president of the college, and I have pleasant memories of meeting him on campus not long after coming to town. At that moment, I did not realize that Carthage was in dire financial straits with enrollments spiraling downward and confidence crumbling almost by the day. It was the plight of many small colleges at that time, but Carthage was in especially acute trouble and without a radical turnaround, it was hard to imagine how the school could have survived.
The Board of Trustees knew it better than anyone, which is why Dr. Dahl stepped down and a gifted, experienced administrator from the University of Chicago was brought in to seize the reins. And President Campbell did exactly that, leading with an aggressive and confident hand that was almost certainly the difference in whether or not the school would survive the crisis. It wasn’t easy, and I know that President Campbell created a fair amount of dismay and even resentment amongst some of the faculty with his take-charge style. But as far as I can tell, there is not the slightest room for doubt that no one is more responsible for the survival of the college than President Campbell.
I find myself entangled in these two stories – the storm from last week and President Campbell’s legacy at Carthage – and fascinated by the complexities and questions wrapped up in each of them. How can one compare this recent storm to the turbulent difficulties which threatened the college’s very existence 25 years ago? Is such a threat most wisely met by hunkering down and resisting the wind which would sweep you off your feet? Or is it by bending and changing?(And what about if you’re changing from a pliable, flexible leadership style to one much firmer and unyielding? How strange is that?!?) How about another threat to its existence thirty years before that, when the school was still located in Carthage, Illinois – and the trains and buses had stopped going there, which made it an increasingly difficult destination to reach. . .which resulted, in turn, in plummeting enrollments? The Board of Trustees demonstrated vision and courage in embracing what to many must have seemed like an utterly audacious and highly risky plan to relocate the school, lock stock and barrel, to Kenosha, Wisconsin. . . a move which now looks positively brilliant and saved the school from extinction but which at the time must have seemed a little bit nuts! That move seems to perfectly embody the sentiment of a saying I have on a plaque at home: You cannot change the wind, but you can adjust your sails. Of course, trees are not sailboats – and neither are colleges. And I know nothing about sailing except that it’s incredibly challenging if you unexpectedly find yourself in a storm – and adjusting the sails the wrong way can make a bad situation even worse.
All I know is that I have negligible gifts when it comes to knowing what to do in dire circumstances. ( I am much better at hand-wringing. ) But I’m glad that in the various spheres of my professional life, there have been people who seemed to know what to do – knew how the sails had to be adjusted – when storms arose. Thank God for Pastor Jeff Barrow (now Bishop Barrow) for shepherding Holy Communion through one of the shakiest moments in its long history when its senior pastor was asked to resign and much anger, hurt and fear had to be addressed and healed. Thank God for Dave Cole, for leading WGTD so effectively out of what had been a low ebb in its history into its exciting present chapter when it is serving the community more effectively than ever before. And thank God for everyone, including/especially President Campbell, who is responsible for guiding Carthage through more than one storm. I am so thankful for these trees in my own life that are still standing . . . for these boats that are still sailing.