Remarks at the Memorial Service for Frederick W. Cropp III

Remarks at the Memorial Service for Frederick W. Cropp III

August 19, 2017

The College of Wooster

Scheide Music Hall

J. Douglas Drushal

I guess I am in love with the Earth!

Coming to Wooster

Fred Cropp arrived at the College of Wooster in 1950, from Wheeling, West Virginia, where his father was Presbyterian minister.  Fred’s initial thought was that he would be an English major, later he thought Sociology.  Fred’s father, Wooster Class of 1926 and a good friend of Howard Lowry, was a very prominent force in the Presbyterian Church, and recall that in those days there was much more concern about the perceived conflict between religion and the teaching of evolution.  As such, those who knew neither his father nor the College very well thought Fred’s eventual choice of Geology as a Major to be curious.  Fred found this amusing, knowing that Wooster stood firmly on the side of science in this debate and that there really was no conflict to be debated. After all, Prexy Wishart had debated the topic with William Jennings Bryan on the floor of the Presbyterian General Assembly in the early 1920s, taking the side of teaching evolution.  It was into such a campus, and such a Geology Department, that Fred stuck his toe with an introductory class.  The Department, led for many years by Professor Charles Moke, Wooster Class of 1931, hooked Fred and therein arose his lifelong love for all things geologic. 

Fred was often asked if he argued with his father, to which Fred replied that they did, indeed, have bitter arguments … about baseball, and whether the National or American League had the better talent.

Scientia et Religio Ex Uno Fonte … at its best.

Returning to Wooster/Administration

Excited by Geology at Wooster, after graduation Fred went on to earn his doctorate from the University of Illinois, where he also taught for six years.  He and Helen returned to Wooster in 1964, recruited to a new administrative position of Associate Dean, along with being Associate Professor of Geology (promoted to full Professor in 1969).  Howard Lowry suggested Fred for this new position and when my father checked with Charlie Moke as a reference for Fred, Charlie responded that Fred was one of the department’s best students ever and they had been trying to bring him back for some time.  That was all the reference checking that was needed.

The Deanship did not last too long due to the sudden death of Howard Lowry on July 4, 1967, at which time Vice President Drushal became Acting President and Fred essentially became acting Vice President.  A national search was undertaken for a new President, and Fred was one of the faculty representatives on that committee.  Upon the Board selecting my father as President in early 1968, he immediately asked Fred to be his Vice President for Academic Affairs, which Fred accepted at the youthful age of 36.  They formed a great team for the rest of their decade of leadership.  Both trusted the other implicitly and duties were delegated and not second guessed.  It was unusual for my father and Fred to attend the same meetings since they didn’t think that necessary.  A delightful outgrowth of this professional relationship was the Drushal family and Cropp family becoming close, a relationship I am pleased continues to this day.

One important task impacted by Fred’s leadership was the effort to begin the transformation of the faculty at the College from what was, in 1967, almost exclusively Western-oriented, Protestant, white, and male.  While there were a few female faculty members, virtually every one of them was unmarried, and low paid despite including some wonderful teachers.  Fred set about to change this, and improve faculty salaries and fringe benefits across the board.  He was successful, at least in getting started on this process, although all of these issues certainly remain challenging yet today.

1967-77 were perhaps the most turbulent years in the history of higher education in the United States.  I am sorry if I sound like the old timer who walked uphill to school both ways in his youth, but this is simply the truth.  The trio of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and a revolution in values presented issues on college campuses which remain unmatched to today.  These were heady times on this campus.  Recall that we are just down the road from Kent State, where the outcome was much different than here at Wooster.  Fred was at the forefront of dealing with those issues in a manner which related to student concerns but kept the situation peaceful.  Fred was instrumental in coordinating a very student-oriented team, including the likes of Westminster’s Ray Swartzback, College physician Viola Startzman, then-Dean Henry Copeland and Dean of Students Doris Coster.

Of course, if you knew Fred and my father, things were also fun in Galpin Hall.  Both had a great sense of humor that fed off of one another.  A smile was never far away.

Do you recall the Pet Rock craze of the mid-1970s?  Well, being a Geologist, of course someone got a Pet Rock for Fred, which he proudly displayed in its original gift case.  One day, the rock was missing and in its place was a ransom note, demanding that a large sum of money be delivered to a location to be disclosed later.  In those days, ransom notes consisted of words assembled by pasting on a sheet of paper excerpts cut out of newspapers and the like.  Well, Fred foiled the kidnappers by placing in the container a number of smaller pebble-sized rocks, with a note explaining that his Pet Rock was pregnant and had reproduced and thus he would not be meeting the kidnappers’ demands.

Some of you will also remember that at their last Commencement in 1977 every graduating senior handed my father a golf ball, which quickly started overflowing all of the available storage space on the podium.  This was Fred’s idea, but as a Plan B to divert a devious group of students whose Plan A was to move all of the furniture out of the President’s office and onto the podium.  Upon learning of this plot, Fred succeeded in diverting the conspirators into the golf ball donations.  Although it turned out they were just the very used balls from the driving range at the College golf course, to which they were returned shortly after commencement.

Returning to the Classroom

After the end of his time as Vice President in 1977, Fred took a year’s leave at the University of Arizona, thus beginning a long association with that state.  More about that later.  While Fred enjoyed administration and excelled at it, I think it is fair to say that his real love was teaching, and he became one of Wooster’s most beloved faculty members in the long history of this institution.

Fred had what it takes to be an outstanding Professor.  Full command of his subject matter, an evident caring for and empathy with students, an engaging style of delivery of the material, a challenging approach that made students work harder than they thought they might have to.  He never excused poor grammar, to the chagrin of many students who wondered why that mattered in a science class.

Listen to the following collection of comments from former students:

“I will always remember Professor Cropp and my freshman Geology 101 class. His contagious enthusiasm and passion for the subject, coupled with an ability to make rocks interesting will never leave me. I still regularly bore friends and family alike with random, unsolicited comments on things like the Kaibab formation, siltstone layers, thrust faults and glacial erratics. I remain fascinated by the subject to this very day. He was a great teacher and a great man.”

“Fred Cropp was the person I listed on a recent C.O.W alumni survey, ironically the day he died, as the person who most influenced me while at Wooster and after graduation. So very many twists and turns in my life since graduation in 1983 can be traced back to him. Thank you, Dr. Cropp, for making my life richer.”

“I knew Dr. Cropp in both his capacity as Dean and as a geology prof. Wonderful, inspirational person with lots of smiles and laughs. Loved his geology class that was informative and had lots of illustrative slides. If I had taken this class in my freshman year instead of my senior, I probably would have majored in geology. I live in western Canada. In my travels around western North America I've visited lots of the places he showed in his slides, and I always think of him.”

“No one epitomizes Wooster or the Wooster experience more than Fred Cropp, and I feel truly blessed to consider him a teacher, mentor, and most importantly, friend. My fondest memories of Dr. Cropp are simply watching his eyes light up, discussing plate tectonics, or slogging around a rainy, muddy field trip, sharing his knowledge and experience. Dr. Cropp taught immeasurable life lessons to his students, many of which I carry with me to this very day. And of all things, I learned how to truly write and write well in his classes? Learn to write and think critically in a Geology class? Yes, if you have Fred Cropp as your professor. While I mourn the passing of Fred Cropp with his family and friends, I also celebrate a life very well lived. Few are lucky enough to have such far-reaching impact and influence on the lives of thousands, and simply have fun doing it. Fred Cropp was someone who did and I consider myself lucky and privileged to have known him.”

I could go on at length, but I think you get the point.  Many other comments could be boiled down to “He was the best professor I had at the College.”

And especially interesting were quite a number of comments to the effect of “I am a Geologist today because of Fred Cropp.”  Abe Springer, now Professor of Geology at Northern Arizona University (see how Arizona keeps popping up?), wrote “Like many Geology majors, I didn’t consider majoring in Geology until I was turned on to it through Physical Geology with Fred. … I still have my journals from that semester and immensely enjoy pulling them out every now and then and reading them.  I even assign similar writing assignments for [my students].”

Fred was often a spokesperson for the College, on campus and elsewhere.  A colleague of mine who graduated from the College but never took a class from Fred commented once to me, after hearing a presentation from Fred at an alumni event:  Fred Cropp seems to be who the College trots out to alumni to impress them with what’s happening on campus.

And from another former student: I went to Wooster because of Fred. He came to Washington DC with the recruiting team and he gave an amazing presentation of his trip down the Grand Canyon and created an analogy to the Wooster experience and I was hooked!

While Fred loved Geology and thought it important, he never wanted students to think only about that.  Abe Springer again:  “Fred encouraged us to balance our lives inside and outside of Scovel Hall.  I’ll never forget how Fred talked Frank Koucky into delaying a minerology exam so that we could come over to Fred’s house and watch an NCAA basketball Final Four game.”  Fred definitely thought that sports, whether as athlete or fan, was an important part of the college experience.  And theatre, lectures, concerts, late night bull sessions, take it all in and find something new.  It was no accident that Fred’s closest friends on the faculty taught in other departments.

Fred’s approach was outlined in a series of letters he wrote to each of his children as they headed off to college at various schools.  He adapted these letters into an Op-Ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1989, just after the youngest, Tom, headed off to Northern Arizona University.  After some practical tips about independent decision making and good study habits and social habits, he encouraged them to do at least one extra thing every week, including things that might not appeal at first glance.  Do not worry about asking “Who am I?”, as that will come in the daily decisions made outside the classroom.  Rather, remain open to growth and change.  “If the college you go to is any good, it will hit you like a ton of bricks and stretch you until you squawk.”  He closed, “Peace, love and good luck.”

And finally, The Grand Canyon

During Fred’s leave year, while in Arizona in the summer of 1978, through the pre-Google search processes of the day, Fred arranged to take a raft trip through the Grand Canyon organized by Hatch River Expeditions.  He was hooked.  He returned to Wooster with a plan to both coordinate and lead such trips for the College as an alumni travel opportunity.  Thus began nearly twenty years of leading such trips, starting out in 1980 with one trip that included some people in this room today and Charlie Moke, long retired and then living in Arizona.  The administrator in Fred oversaw the coordination of the logistics before the trips.  The Geology teacher in Fred had the joyous task of explaining the Canyon Geology to all along during the trips.  

Careful to call it The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River (as there are other places, Yellowstone included, that have canyons labelled “grand”), it became a place that Fred liked to call his “La Querencia.”  This is a metaphysical concept in the Spanish language which describes a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home.

Always one to compose his own journal, and encourage others to do the same, during Fred’s first trip, his first journal entry was “I guess I am in love with the Earth.”

From a single trip in 1980, word got out and the next year it was two trips, already including repeaters from the year before.  This pattern of repeaters continued throughout, with some going nearly every year.  My first trip was 1983, memorable as the year of record-setting flows and fears that the Glen Canyon Dam, just upstream from the Grand Canyon, was at risk of sudden collapse.  The pattern was established of trip lists of Fred’s former Wooster students, Fred’s former Geology colleagues from around the country, local Wooster folks, and others who knew someone in one of the former categories.  There was virtually no advertising and no promotion.

The thrill of the rapids in the Canyon was definitely a draw.  After all, it’s the fastest navigable white water in the Western Hemisphere.  Fred enjoyed watching others enjoy the Roaring 20s, Unkar, the Jewels, Hance, Sockdolager, Hermit (my personal favorite), Crystal, Lava Falls.  But the River was just a means of conveyance to see not only the Geology visible from the River but also to access the side canyons, places of spectacular beauty, with lush greenery and warm waterfalls, the latter being a nice respite from the frigid waters of the main River.  The River got Fred to fantastic hiking trails, facilitating frequent hikes, sometimes just short strolls and other times taking up to eight or more hours.  We would hike up to the Granaries at Nankoweap, up and over at Carbon Creek and Lava Chuar, up to Elves Chasm to jump off the cliff into the water pooled below, to the waterfall up Stone Creek, and the genuinely grueling up Tapeats Creek, across Surprise Valley and down into Deer Creek through the Throne Room.  Toward the end of each trip, there would be a “silent hike” up National Canyon, an otherwise routine (albeit, still spectacular) side canyon, where Fred required walking quietly by one’s self and taking some time to contemplate.

And, of course, I must mention Blacktail Canyon, where just a few dozen yards off the main River is an excellent view of the Great Unconformity, a place where two adjoining rock layers should not be adjoining, missing hundreds of millions of years of geologic history.  Now, I must confess that this exposure to the Great Unconformity was more awe-inspiring to Fred and other geologists who might be along than it was to the History Majors in the group.  But to sit in this place, a cool respite in the shade away from the 100 degree air along the River, and listen to Fred talk about the passage of hundreds of millions of years was a special experience.  We still stop in Blacktail every year, I was just there a few weeks ago, and new geologists share Fred’s enthusiasm for the place, and always place their fingers on either side of the hundreds of millions of years gap.  I will never forget the thrill of seeing Fred revel in this small portion of La Querencia. 

At Mile 170 in the Canyon, there is a rock formation along River Right the forms a small mesa-like structure.  When we would pass that spot, Fred would quip that if there were ever a statue erected in his honor that this rock should be the “plinth”, a term he explained was the base upon which a statue is erected.  This was good Cropp humor, said with a smile, as he really did not expect a statue to be erected anywhere.  And Fred was not a Saint.  He had his human frailties, as we all do.  I know he had some regrets and some things in his life did not turn out as he would have liked.  But if anyone deserves a statue to be erected in his honor, I would be eager to nominate Fred.

In 1990, the College decided, for reasons I never really understood, that the College should not be the sponsor of these trips any longer, but Fred was not ready to quit, so he came to me as his lawyer with the task of creating a new non-profit corporation to be the sponsor.  He said he wanted to call it “Environmental Experiences, Inc.”, and thus was born EE.  I informed him that Ohio law requires at least three directors for a non-profit corporation, so he said he would be one, Tom would be one, and, pointing at me, said “You’ll be the other.”  I did not take this as a request, but rather an order.  But that was fine with me, and led to a wonderful ongoing relationship with EE which has been a meaningful part of my life.

The name was important to Fred, as he saw these trips as not just vacations for those coming along, but truly an environmental experience in the wilderness, surrounded by the best Geology workshop known to humanity.  Folks who went along were not “passengers”, but rather “participants”.  He wanted participants to emerge with a new, or renewed, appreciation of the environment.  He explained what we were seeing, starting with the bus ride from Flagstaff to Lee’s Ferry and continuing through the bus ride back to Flagstaff from Lake Mead.  He carried a Canyon library with him on every trip, in addition to the normal collection of maps which seem to accompany all geologists.  All of his adult life, Fred was an “environmentalist”, before that term was popular.  He certainly did not waste paper, as those of you who received his hand-written notes on scraps of paper can attest.  Before anyone knew anything about “carbon footprint”, Fred’s was quite small.

When Fred retired from teaching in 1998, he decided to retire from running Environmental Experiences.  He had recently undergone bypass surgery and while he was still the same old Fred we did not realize at the time that he was beginning his long, slow descent into what robbed him of his mind that was so painful for the rest of us to watch in recent years.  But Tom and I thought that EE was too good a thing to just let it die, so we took over and have continued it, still using Hatch as our outfitter but hiring another Geologist to play the Fred Cropp Geologist role in the Canyon.  The Canyon is still magnificent and Tom and I are pretty nice guys, but we quickly found out that the real draw for these trips was Fred.  We now are happy to fill one boat (maybe two) once per year.

Think about this:  Imagine, if you will, organizing a trip with a group of friends to visit some beautiful place.  Perhaps Provence or Tuscany, perhaps India and the Taj Mahal, or an African Safari, or a River Cruise, some place anyone would like to go.  Then, imagine finding 30-some people who would like to take that trip with you, and coordinate their travel plans and arrange for lodging and meals and all that would go with such a trip, and they would all pay their own way.  You can imagine that.  I was on such a trip just last year to Normandy.  But now try to imagine finding four more groups of 30-some people who also want to take that same trip the same year with you.  Then try to imagine getting most of those people to go again with you, sometimes over and over again, year after year for twenty years, eventually having some two thousand people take your trip.  I just cannot imagine doing that.  I just don’t have that many friends!  Such was the draw of traveling with Fred Cropp.

One year during the peak years of EE, Fred sponsored a reunion, held at the President’s Home on campus.  Henry Copeland remarked afterward:  “Fred, you’ve created a cult!”  While not meeting the technical definition “cult”, there was quite a following of people who smiled when they heard the word “Sockdolager”, who didn’t say “Goodbye” but said “See you Down the River”, who knew they were “participants” and not “passengers”, who appreciated “The Great Unconformity”, who knew to say “rock” and never “stone”, and otherwise “spoke Canyon”.

While thinking about these remarks, I thought it would be appropriate to close with an eloquent passage from the extensive collection of Canyon literature.  Perhaps the journal of John Wesley Powell, the leader of the first recorded passage through the Canyon in 1869.  Perhaps the writing of Edward Abbey, noted author of such books as The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, two of Fred’s favorite books.  Indeed, Fred and Edward Abbey even had an intriguing exchange of correspondence about the relative merits of rowing trips vs. motorized trips in the Canyon.  But my research included a Convocation Talk by Fred and none of these other authors said it any better, so let’s end with Fred’s own words, again taken from his own journal on his first trip:

“I guess I am in love with the Earth. 

Tonight I am lost in time and space.  I put my watch away last Saturday and I do not know when it is – although I suspect it is early morning on Friday, July 14. 

Since I woke up I have been lying here looking at the stars – and clouds – wondering where we all are – where any of us is.

I think I know better than ever before where I am.  I think I learned that Wednesday – after a long hike up Deer Creek where cold water poured from the Muav Limestone and where I wept – me – FWC.  I wept for joy and appreciation for what the Grand Canyon has meant to me.  I wept as I looked east from the top of the Tapeats Sandstone – and saw almost the entire Grand Canyon geologic story before my eyes.

I have thought a lot this week about our Earth, the people on this trip – and some people not on this trip.

My appreciation of those who appreciate our Earth – and who, I suspect, share my love of it – has grown.  I have loved watching them push themselves – and me – to a greater appreciation of the Earth and some of its inhabitants.

I have felt sorry for those whose minds and/or bodies do not allow them to experience what I have experienced.  But I have felt most sorry for those whose minds and bodies would have allowed them to do more … and grow more….  ****

My flashlight has attracted hundreds of bugs – a rarity in the Grand Canyon – and I need the rest my mind and body cry for.  Yet sleep is hard for me in the Grand Canyon because this canyon brings me to peace with myself and with our Earth –and I think maybe that is God.”

Fred’s spirit is now certainly in his La Querencia.  Rest in Peace, my friend.  And we do not say Goodbye, we just say See you Down the River.