Emily Jazmin Tatum Perez

West Point, 2005

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Dr. Morten G. Ender on September 21, 2006:

Dear Emily, Teachers should not bury their students. A mentor told me it violates the natural order of things. My worldview is that my students will bury me. At my post-burial reception, I would hope they would share grand stories and embellish about my enthusiasm, knowledge of subject, communication skills, and concern for my students. You however have turned my world upside down. Learning of your death, I now think of you! What a splendid and wonderful student you were?your understated concern for leaving behind a world better than you found it. Please don?t misinterpret my idealism. I am not na? about your work and the world we live in. I know danger and risk are features of your profession. What we do here at the Academy helps to prepare you. But as a teacher, I don?t allow myself to think about this. I focus on lifelong learning and preparing you for a longer journey?one that expects you to lead; to show the world what is right. Ironically, we never had a class together?but I followed your academic work with interest and earnestness. You did it?you passed the ultimate final examination?a better student a teacher has no right to ask for. So now I sit here thinking about you. My most immediate memories are of you swirling into my office?our meetings were often fleeting but always on-task. You consistently seemed to be needed in two places at once and the demands grew more with each passing year. We knew each other for four years. I do have your first email to me?August 26, 2002. You reintroduced yourself to me. We had met a year before while you were a plebe in PL100. In your message you wrote that you had decided to major in Sociology. More importantly, you wanted to go to Kenya and work with a public health organization?perhaps help children suffering from AIDs. You had won my heart and mind. I now recall my excitement for you?here?s the kind of student I came into teaching to teach. My colleagues praised you?how fortunate we were to be to teach you. You would be the quintessential undergraduate?selflessly committed to making a difference in the world. Now I can only imagine meeting you again. I imagine you in the context of one of the greatest joys for a teacher?hearing from former students. More gratifying is an actual visit. I imagine you knocking on my door and I turn to see your brilliant smile. You no doubt would say ?Hi Sir.? I would give you a big hug. We would sit and talk. You would tell me how you?re doing?how your family is doing (I fondly recall your enthusiasm and pride in introducing me to your mother at a Martin Luther King Jr. dinner in January 2003). I would ask about your soldiers. You would tell me of your pride in them, what a privilege it is to be a leader, and how you never take that privilege for granted. You?d share stories about the new places you?ve seen around the world. I would probe more about specifics?I would want stories that reflect on lessons learned. I want stories to share in the classroom with my new students from my former students?to help pass the proverbial baton to the next generation. Before too long our teacher-student roles would resume and we?d both realize that you needed to go. As always, you would need to be two places at once. You will be laid to rest here soon. I will think of you often and every-time I jog past the West Point Cemetery. I?ll tell my new cadets about you. I want them all to be like you?brilliant, committed, respected, selfless, a leader. I have learned so much more about you from your friends and loved ones. We would certainly have sent you to the best graduate school to return here to teach in BS&L?you would have made a tremendous colleague. We would have worked together?taught one another to be better teachers. We could have talked about Heidelberg, the Army, Disney films, leadership, Iraq, cadet life, and you being an ?Old Grad.? Thank you for your authenticity. Thank you for your service. Thank you for being a positive role model?indeed the model?for a leader of character. Rest in peace. Your P, Morten G. Ender, Ph.D. Sociology Program Director and Associate Professor of Sociology Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership Thayer Hall United States Military Academy West Point, NY 10996 U.S.A. Email: morten.ender@usma.edu

admin