A few thoughts on Dr. Ken Schiff

“...the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I cannot think of On the Road without also thinking of Mercyhurst College professor Ken Schiff, who died last week. Between 1995 and 1999, we talked a lot about its closing lines, never resolving our opposing thoughts on its meaning.

His death raises up many submerged memories. I met Dr. Schiff the day before classes started my freshman year, right before an invocation that all students had to attend. Not knowing anyone and really not into Mercyhurst at this point – I missed out on the schools I wanted to attend and had every intention of transferring - I ended up sitting with Dr. Schiff during dinner.

My comfortable in an uneasy place grew immediately. I liked him immediately – the man once was a National Book Award finalist yet he treated a razor-burnt 18-year-old like an equal. He started gently mocked the proceedings, sarcastically asking me why the readings didn't include Arthur Rimbaud. I couldn't help but laugh. As we did so many times, we talked about On the Road, as well as the poetry of Gregory Corso, especially "Bomb."

I had little interest in staying at Mercyhurst, an attitude that would shift in the coming months. Dr. Schiff improved my comfort level with the school and led me toward cherishing my years at the little school overlooking Lake Erie. It also helped that he taught two of the four courses I took fall term. 

Despite his affability, Dr. Schiff was a tough teacher, a man who tried to push students to improve their work. At the time, I thought the occasion B grade or even the rare C+ was meant to teach me a lesson, as though he didn’t like my term paper subjects. Over time, I see that he thought me capable of better writing at a time when I tried to coast on vocabulary and writing skill. The hard work part of the equation has often eluded me, but Dr. Schiff could spur me to produce better quality.

Not every moment was rosy. Sometimes he told disinterested students to take a hike. I felt that heat just once. I dismissed Puritan-era literature as "boring" and got a snicker from the class. After a tense reply, he stopped speaking to me for the rest of the class. I could never forget the look of anger he flashed. Needless to say, I never again spoke out against a whole body of literature during a Dr. Schiff class.

When not enrolled in his courses, I regularly stopped to talk writing, poetry and life in his  book-lined office in Preston Hall. Outside class, he just called me “Melville.” Whenever he saw me with a cigarette around campus, he shook his head and said, "I can't believe you smoke, Melville." Even now I can hear his dusty voice and remember the authority and kindness it carried.

We had an unexpected personal connection. He grew up in a little Connecticut town called Westport, graduating from Staples High School. My mother grew up in Westport and graduated from Staples, albeit years after Dr. Schiff.

Dr. Schiff had two songs that worked his way into almost every class – Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man and Don McLean’s American Pie. I never grow tired of Mr. Tambourine Man. On the rare occasions when American Pie emerged from the radio, I'm shuttled back to an Old Main classroom, analyzing every allegory-rich line.

After graduation, I didn’t stay in touch with many professors but for a few years, I traded e-mails with Dr. Schiff for a few years, although I found myself with less and less to say after we talked about the Beat Generation and the Mountain West. A year after  I graduated, I sent him a mixed tape of Bob Dylan songs from his Bootleg Series, which included Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, the only poem Dylan ever recited publicly.

There were only a few post-college encounters, but they were memorable. Five years out of college, I wrote newspaper articles, columns and little else. We talked about writing. I mentioned the poetry spark had dimmed and I struggled to cobble together a few lines. He quickly reminded me that Arthur Rimbaud quit poetry at 19. During my college years we talked frequently about the French Symbolists, and it was just what I needed to hear. Now that I’m writing fiction again, I can also credit him for encouraging some early efforts in a fiction writing class he taught.

The last time I saw him was either 2004 or 2006. The last time I thought of him was a few weeks ago, 20 years having passed since of my favorite college days. In May 1997, a busload of Mercyhurst English majors loaded into a school van, Dr. Schiff behind the wheel. We drove through a spring rain to Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a field trip that dovetailed into the Counter-culture literature class Schiff taught that term.

The Hall of Fame plaza hosted a free concert including Donovan (who we met while he was walking through the Hall of Fame earlier that day), Country Joe McDonald of Woodstock fame and Big Brother & the Holding Company (anonymous musicians with a Janis Joplin stand-in).

The music was strictly prologue - We were there for Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who rode up to Lake Erie on a recreation of their psychedelic bus from the 1960s. We had just read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, so their visit could not have been more timely.

The spring rain poured all morning, and the day lightened up in time for the Merry Pranksters’ bus to pull up and Kesey to take the stage, delivering a sometimes hilarious monologue. For the longest time, a picture of Dr. Schiff and his English majors in front of Kesey's bus adorned my walls.


2017 is shaping up to be a year that will claim many important people with whom I've lost touch. The realization that you'll never speak again can be a tough blow.

In the case of Dr. Schiff, the lost mentor, I can always look back to that Merry Pranksters' afternoon, or wonder how differently my life might have roamed had he not been so welcoming in my earliest Merchurst days.