Editor, Fargo Forum
Aug. 11, 2015
 
Greetings:

Not long ago the Forum made note of the passing of Catherine Cater, age 98. At her request, few details appeared in the obituary, but I feel a few should be added in appreciation of this once brilliant star in a constellation of great instructors teaching in the 60's at MS where I sought my degree in English. I was blessed at the time to take classes from four really charismatic members of the English dept; Joe Satin, Shakespeare, Clarence (Soc) Glasrud, English novels, Roland Dille, Modern British Lit, and Rufus Bellamy (brilliant in everything, especially the King James Bible)

But one prof., not a part of the English dept., still shines out first magnitude my philosophy teacher, Dr. Catherine Cater. It was she who did most in those early pre-graduate years to teach us how to think.

Time after time her searching questions and perplexing paradoxes presented in the best Socratic style, sent me scurrying to the stacks looking for proofs to support assumptions I thought were valid. Her class should have been called the challenge of ideas, and she presented those challenges with an eloquence and kindness that prompted even some of the shyest students to venture opinions without fear of being scorned. She made Socrates and Plato come alive and kids sat in the Union talking philosophy and ideas, not just rock and roll.

Some of the greatest lies her example exposed were many of the cruel and twisted stereotypes floating about in the general conversation about black people, about whom most students living up here in the white and frozen north were pretty much clueless. It took Jackie Robinson's courage,(grace under pressure) Floyd Patterson's articulateness, Martin Luther King's eloquent martyrdom, and Catherine Cater's pure and elegant brilliance to consign that pack of lies back to the pit it came from.---at least for me.

And so sweet Catherine, always so modest and self-effacing, always so gracious and kind, I hope one of your close friends someday writes the story of your exemplary life. The world deserves, nay needs to know that great ones such as yourself, (who endured it all during times when being black made one a target for derision, scorn, even bullets), still emerged victorious.

Stephen Spender, I think, describes you best: Born of the sun you traveled a short while towards the sun And left the vivid air signed with your honour.*

Farewell, Sweet Kate. Hope to be your student once again.. one fine day up Home.

Gene P. Pinkney, Wahpeton N. Dakota.

*"I Think Continually of Those Who Are Truly Great"