The Doppelgänger and the Dean

In the spring of 1967, near the end of my sopho­more year in UVA’s Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences I was required to declare a major. My pas­sion was Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, but the class­es were dif­fi­cult and I was strug­gling to main­tain a C aver­age. I decid­ed to declare Edu­ca­tion, which was eas­i­er. To major in teach­ing I applied to UVA’s Cur­ry School of Edu­ca­tion. Although Cur­ry usu­al­ly admit­ted stu­dents in good stand­ing from the Col­lege, I was prompt­ly rejected. 

 

I sched­uled a meet­ing with Curry’s Dean of Admis­sions to ask him why they turned me down. A tall, pot­bel­lied man with a big nose and a mel­on-sized bald head, dressed in a frumpy black suit and a wide red tie, the dean remind­ed me of Wimpy from the Pop­eye car­toons, but Wimpy was always in a good mood and the dean seemed aggra­vat­ed when I sat down in a chair across his desk from him.

“The rea­son we reject­ed your appli­ca­tion should be no mys­tery to you,” he said. “Your record is atro­cious. Aca­d­e­m­ic pro­ba­tion. Cut pro­ba­tion. Drink­ing probation.”

I stared at him in shock. “I’m not on probation.”

He smirked. “Lying will do you no good, Mr. Oder.” 

“I’m not lying,” I said, still stunned. “I’m not on pro­ba­tion for anything.”

He nar­rowed his eyes, opened a file, and read from it. “Ken­neth J. Oder. Aca­d­e­m­ic pro-”

“Wait!” I said. “That’s wrong. I’m Ken­neth W. Oder.”

Still smirk­ing, he paused and read aloud a birth date. It was the right year but the wrong day and month. Frown­ing, he rat­tled off a stu­dent I.D. num­ber. It didn’t match my number. 

The dean fum­bled with the file. “There may be some sort of mis­take,” he said. “I’ll con­tact the Col­lege and get back to you.” 

Not trust­ing Wimpy to get it right, I made a bee line from his office to Cabell Hall where the College’s files were archived.

The Cabell Hall clerk con­firmed there was anoth­er sopho­more in the Col­lege named Ken Oder. I was amazed. Oder isn’t exact­ly a com­mon sur­name. The odds against anoth­er Ken Oder in UVA’s class of 1969 seemed astro­nom­i­cal. I want­ed to meet this guy.

I went to the dor­mi­to­ry where the Cabell Hall clerk said the oth­er Ken Oder lived. A stu­dent I didn’t know sat on a sofa in the lounge. When I crossed the room, he greet­ed me. “Hey, Ken.” 

I stopped. “Excuse me. Do I know you?”

He squint­ed at me. “I’m sor­ry. I thought you were some­one else.”

“Are you Ken Oder?” I asked.

“No. Fact is I thought you were Ken Oder. You’re almost a dead ringer for him.”

“Yeah, well, I am Ken Oder, but not the one who lives here.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. I explained. He said Ken Oder wasn’t there and he didn’t know where he was or when he’d be back. I left my con­tact information. 

One night the fol­low­ing week when I was sit­ting in the back of a greasy-spoon din­er, a friend walked by my table and did a dou­ble-take. “What the hell?” he said. “I just spoke to you on your way out the door.” He said he’d greet­ed me by name and I had looked at him with a puz­zled expres­sion, mum­bled hi back to him, and kept going. 

I thought I knew who he’d seen. I ran out­side, look­ing for Ken Oder, but he was gone.

Col­lege sopho­mores were required to meet with a Col­lege fac­ul­ty mem­ber about declar­ing their major. My meet­ing was sched­uled a few days after I nar­row­ly missed the elu­sive Ken Oder at the din­er. I was assigned to John Gra­ham, Assis­tant Dean of the Col­lege. When I arrived at Cabell Hall for my appoint­ment, stu­dents stand­ing in line out­side his office said he was run­ning an hour behind.

In his for­ties, tall and thin with a pleas­ant smile, Dean Gra­ham final­ly ush­ered me into his office two hours late. It was a mess. Files, man­u­scripts, and books were strewn all over the place, and strange­ly, an old machine gun was mount­ed on a cre­den­za by the win­dow. I eyed it uneasi­ly as I took a seat at his desk.

He reviewed my file (the right one this time). “I see you intend to declare Edu­ca­tion,” he said. “Why not Eng­lish Lit?”

“It’s a dif­fi­cult major, and I’m not a good student.”

He stud­ied my tran­script. “Your weak­ness­es are math and sci­ence. A major in Eng­lish would play to your strengths.”

“Edu­ca­tion is an eas­i­er cur­ricu­lum. Besides, I want to be a teacher.”

“An Edu­ca­tion degree will restrict you to teach­ing. An Eng­lish major with a minor in Edu­ca­tion would qual­i­fy you to teach and give you oppor­tu­ni­ties in oth­er fields if you change your mind and want to do some­thing else.”

“I’d rather just go with Education.”

The Dean stared at me weari­ly, then went to his door, told the stu­dents wait­ing out­side to come back in an hour, took off his suit jack­et, propped his feet on his desk, and lit a cig­a­rette. “Let’s talk about this, Mr. Oder.”

We talked. Long and hard. This very busy, over­worked admin­is­tra­tor, who dou­bled as a pro­fes­sor of eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, argued with me about my future like his life depend­ed on it, instead of mine. Short of turn­ing that machine gun on me, he did every­thing he could to con­vince me I could excel in Eng­lish Lit cours­es. At the end of the hour, I with­drew my appli­ca­tion from the School of Edu­ca­tion and declared Eng­lish as my major.

I made the mis­take of not track­ing down the oth­er Ken Oder before the school year end­ed, and he didn’t return to UVA the

fol­low­ing year. I for­got about him until ten years ago when I dis­cov­ered records on geneal­o­gy sites of a Ken Oder born in Vir­ginia in 1947, who was a descen­dant of my great grandfather’s broth­er, but his trail went cold after he left Vir­ginia fifty years ago. In prepar­ing this post, I searched for him again. I could find only two Ken Oders and nei­ther is my age or looks like me.

I had nev­er met Dean Gra­ham before my dec­la­ra­tion of my major, and I encoun­tered him only once after­wards. I passed him on a walk­way near the law school when I was a first year law stu­dent. I stopped and stared after him, think­ing about how much his good coun­sel had meant to me. As he’d pre­dict­ed, I’d changed my mind about teach­ing, and my Eng­lish major had giv­en me the option of going to law school. 

I ran after him and stopped him. He didn’t remem­ber me, but he seemed pleased and slight­ly amused by my enthu­si­as­tic appre­ci­a­tion for his pre­cious time and sage advice. We spoke for only a few min­utes. He walked on, and I nev­er saw him again.

Dean Gra­ham died in 2007 at the age of 81. In his obit­u­ary, UVA Pres­i­dent Cas­teen char­ac­ter­ized him as a favorite of stu­dents, “sym­pa­thet­ic, clever and often fun­ny, respect­ful and opti­mistic about stu­dents’ futures.” I would add car­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, and spec­tac­u­lar­ly persuasive.

In the spring of 1967, I made a deci­sion to take the easy path. Two men blocked my way. Anoth­er Ken Oder unin­ten­tion­al­ly caused a delay. In the inter­im, Dean Gra­ham, who believed in me even though he didn’t know me, con­vinced me to believe in myself and changed the course of my life. 

 

Post Script: Accord­ing to a news arti­cle pub­lished after Dean Graham’s death, the machine gun was a present from his broth­er, who cap­tured it from Japan­ese sol­diers in World War II.