As noted in this post from last week on the funeral services for one of Houston’s finest teachers, Dr. Ross M. Lence of the University of Houston, Dr. Ted Estess — Dean of the University of Houston Honors College and one of Ross’ closest friends — gave a superb eulogy during the Requiem Mass for Ross.

Ted has kindly allowed me to post the text of his eulogy (pdf here), the quality of which is surpassed only by Ted’s moving delivery of the eulogy during the funeral mass. Take a moment to read this touching tribute from a dear friend to a teacher’s teacher who has left an indelible mark on Houston:

Farewell to Our Teacher and Friend

I begin with the salutation that Ross himself used most often: Salutem in Domine.

Our teacher and friend Ross Lence was well known and loved for many things: certainly for the clarity and sharpness of his intellect; for the generosity and gaiety of his spirit; for his indefatigable dedication to his students.

In his early years, he was known for the briskness of his step across campus, such that admiring students hurried to keep up; throughout his years, we knew him for the garish colors and shocking patterns of his ties and suspenders.

But perhaps above all, our friend and brother Ross was known and loved for the quickness of his wit; for the merriment and laughter that he bestowed on any gathering, effortlessly, with grace, bite, and kindness.

If his greeting was Salutem in Domine, his farewell was Gaudeamus! Rejoice! Take pleasure in life! Enjoy!

A spirit of hilaritas and felicitas! That is what our friend gave us. That  is what we gladly remember, what we shall sorely miss.

So it is not surprising that every one of Ross’ students has some story to tell. One student received his first paper back from the Good Doctor, only to read this comment: “Young man, if we are going to communicate, we are going to have to settle on a common language. I prefer English.”

This morning, we have no difficulty finding a common language. And I am not speaking of English. What we hold in common — what holds us in common — is gratitude, respect, and affection for Ross himself.

For you see, Ross Lence had an extraordinary capacity to dispose persons in a common direction, and to constitute community. The means by which he did so was conversation; for conversation, practiced with Ross’ wit and generosity, binds persons together. It builds and manifests community.

Anyone who visited Ross in the hospital this past weekend, or anyone who saw him during the year of his illness, witnessed that community. Last evening and again this morning, that community gathered in abundance, present and palpable.

Graybeards from the early 1970’s are taking interest in current Honors students; graduates from the 1980’s are interacting easily with Lencians from the 90’s — all of them, students, faculty, and alumni from four decades, immediately connecting, telling their own stories about their outrageous and beloved teacher and friend.

One Lencian tells of the student who, having been late or absent from class a number of times in the semester, walked up to turn in her final exam. His back turned to her, the Good Doctor was writing something on the board, as she said:

“Dr. Lence, you are a horrible teacher, and I want you to know that because of the way you teach, we haven’t learned a single thing this semester.”

And without so much as turning around, Ross replied:

“Yes, madam, and you are empirical proof of that.”

Circero helps us understand the charisma — the spirited gifts — of Ross Lence when he says, “The essence of friendship consists in the fact that many souls . . . become one.”

The collegial community of friends that arose around Ross Lence owed much, of course, to his own altogether distinctive qualities: his personality was as winsome and energetic and engaging as one is ever apt to find.

Donald Lutz — Ross’ close colleague of thirty-five years and a master teacher himself — got it right when he told me earlier this week, “Every thing that Ross did had a little bit of magic about it. He was a chariot of fire, a visitor from another place, a gift of God.”

Ross was our chariot of fire, our celebrity teacher, the one we showed off, the one whom we sent out to the community, the one in whose radiating light we like to stand, as if to suggest, We are a bit like him ourselves. He was our high star (High Star was the street on which Ross lived in Houston for some thirty years), the one by whom we charted our course and calibrated our compass, pedagogically, intellectually, and morally.

But not always politically. Ross was sometimes — well, often — heard to complain about the state of political affairs in the country he so dearly loved. He would snort, “In America, anything is permitted between and among consenting adults except the shooting of firecrackers.”

Those of you who studied Greek philosophy with Ross certainly learned that we can measure every art, including the art of teaching, by its product. The monument to the artist is what he creates.

If we would see the monument to Ross Lence, we need only look around this morning at the community that he, as artist and midwife, brought into being.

Ross would of course want me to say that he had much help in his life and his work, most notably that of his mother, Nickie. “Big Momma” he sometimes called her. One needs only to meet Nickie to see the source of many of her son’s gifts. Over the years, literally thousands of students came to her house to see her son and to eat her food. They also came for the beer.

Our friend Ross, of course, was a teacher of virtue, a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. But he was, as well, a lover of sights and sounds, and of all things beautiful. His offices at the University were appointed more stylishly than mine and other faculty’s offices. And I have to say it: he was an impulsive shopper. Once he told me, “Ted, the only things I regret are the things I didn’t buy.”

To be sure, not all students took to Ross — some were unhappy because he wouldn’t tell them what they should think. He wouldn’t even tell them what he thought.

Other students were unhappy because Ross was irreverent. He said things that would get any other faculty member fired. He talked about cannibalism and goats, and you were never quite sure why.

He certainly was a trickster. Some students, and probably one or two colleagues and an occasional dean, suspected him of being a diabolical Machiavelli. This made him especially happy.

But in reality, the wellspring of Ross’ irrepressibility, of his merriment and generosity, the ground bass of the songs that he sang, was religious. To him, teaching itself was a religious vocation.

I am speaking of religious in the root sense of the word: re-ligio, a binding together again, as ligaments connect and bind. Ross was bound, first of all, to life itself; to reality and to the structure of the real; but also to country, family, and friends — and to the religious tradition that nurtured him from his mother’s arms to his dying day.

The inclination of Ross Lence toward the religious is evident in words that he wrote several years ago to the parents of an Honors student who had suddenly, and tragically, died. As was his custom when people were in trouble — and Ross did such things an untold number of times over the years — Ross reached out to those parents.

He visited them in their home, attended the funeral service of their son, called them several times, and wrote a note, a portion of which I, in closing, want to share with you. As is often the case with what a teacher says, these words of Ross return now to their source:

How I wish that some faint words of mine could erase the sorrow in your hearts. All of us wish for a little more time to reflect and to love life. But God will never abandon those who love him. I am reminded of the immortal words of Catullus on the death of his own brother: atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale — and so for all eternity, brother, hail and farewell.

This has been a weekend of reflection for me as I contemplate the life of one of Houston’s finest teachers — Professor Ross M. Lence (previous post here) of the University of Houston — who died this past week.

Over a hundred former students, colleagues and friends gathered this past Thursday evening to laugh, cry and reminisce about Ross at the visitation, and then those friends and hundreds more gathered on Friday morning for the Requiem Mass for Ross at St. Anne Catholic Church. The mass was profoundly moving, with St. Anne’s soloist Kay Kahl providing beautiful singing and UH Honors College Dean Ted Estess — one of Ross’ best friends and closest colleagues — absolutely hitting the ball out of the park with a poignant eulogy that conveyed perfectly Ross’ extraordinary combination of teaching brilliance, humor and humanity.

A particularly nice touch of the services for Ross was his family’s decision to provide a copy of one of Ross’ essays to everyone who attended. The essay — entitled “On Teaching” — was written by Ross a decade or so ago while collecting his thoughts on teaching in connection with the effort of his former students and friends to raise the funds that eventually endowed the Ross M. Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair at the University of Houston.

Ross never published “On Teaching,” but by passing it along below, I hope that each teacher who happens upon this special essay will take a moment to read and reflect on it, and then use it as inspiration to provide the type of warm, thoughtful and rich mentoring to their students that is Ross Lence’s legacy to his:

I shall not shock anyone, but merely subject myself to good-natured ridicule, if I profess myself inclined to the old way of thinking that the primary concern of teaching and teachers is the student.

While such an observation may seem elementary, it should be noted that for those who define the function of a university as the discovery, preservation, and transmission of knowledge,î the role of teaching (presumably the transmission of knowledge) is formulated in such a way as to avoid mentioning either the teacher or the student. Indeed, when confined to the transmission and preservation of knowledge alone, teaching would seem to be little more than the transmission of decaying sense, entombed in that graveyard of knowledge, the notes of the teacher’s students.

Teaching necessarily involves the highest forms of discovery, the awakening of the students’ minds and souls to the world of creativity and imagination. A good teacher challenges students to join in the continuous, meticulous, and solitary questions of the mind. I myself prefer important questions partially answered to unimportant questions fully answered.

Who could doubt that those students were blessed who witnessed the phenomenal mind of Enrico Fermi as he unleashed the power of the universe on that cold, winter day under the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago? There, with only the assistance of a slide rule and his hands, Fermi managed to do what it now takes two computers to replicate: to produce man’s first nuclear reaction.

There, a great teacher, who in the tongue of his native Italy and understood by hardly anyone present, managed to convey to his peers the desperate need to insert the carbon rods into the nuclear mass, thereby saving not only themselves, but the city of Chicago.

No doubt everyone remembers the teacher who most influenced his or her thoughts, person, and soul. No one is perhaps more aware of the best teachers than teachers themselves. That person who most influenced my own thinking was the Sage of Goose Creek, Charles S. Hyneman, Indiana University’s Distinguished Service Professor and President of the American Political Science Association.

That man did for me something that few teachers have ever done for a student. In a desperate effort to teach this kid from the wilds of Montana about the American Regime, Charles Hyneman took me on a 15,000 mile, 5-year trip across America, where he introduced me to every site where an Indian had died, every sausage factory in American and even Alvin, Texas, home of Nolan Ryan.

Today I attempt to lead my students on such a journey of the mind. Some days are good; some days are not so good. But every day I remind myself that teaching is like missionary work, and that I am the messenger, not the message. I constantly strive to bring others to see the excitement, as well as the limits, offered by the life of the mind. I encourage all students to be bold in their thoughts, moderate in their actions, and courageous in their pursuit of truth, wherever it is and however it can be known.

As I now come to my own golden age, I often think of my teacher. Of his incredible kindness, his depth of soul, and the power of his imagination. My real hope is that I, too, will be remembered by those who come after me with the same fondness.

This, then, is my philosophy of teaching: teachers love their own teachers, and they are loved in turn.

Ross M. Lence
Houston, Texas

Update: Ted Estess eulogized Ross and the Abbeville Institute provides a touching tribute.

A grand and far too rare experience in life is learning from a great teacher.

I have been blessed in my life to have been mentored by two wonderful men who were extraordinary teachers. The first was my father, Dr. Walter M. Kirkendall, who died around this time in 1991.

The other was Dr. Ross Marlo Lence, who died on Tuesday morning, July 11, 2006 in Houston at the age of 62 after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer (Chronicle obituary here). With Ross’ death, Houston has lost a genuine treasure.

Ross was one of Houston’s finest teachers of this generation. Over a phenomenal 30 plus-year teaching career at the University of Houston, Ross taught classic and American political philosophy to scores of eager students and citizens.

Utilizing a marvelous intellect that was refined at the Universities of Chicago, Georgetown and Indiana, Ross was a master craftsman in the art of teaching and was an unparalleled expert in the Socratic method of teaching.

Ross deployed a delightful mixture of insightful philosophy, passionate oratorical skill, and self-deprecating humor to ignite and stoke a passion for learning in his students (“Be bold in thought, precise in speech, moderate in action,” he would continually urge). When I once asked Ross to confide his primary goal as a teacher, he replied with a twinkle in his eye:

“Tom, my goals are modest. All I want is to teach my students how to think, and the difference between right and wrong.”

As a result of Ross’ outstanding talent and dedication to the University of Houston (he served on virtually every academic committee at the University over his career), a large group of his students over a decade ago raised funds to honor him by endowing a chair in his name in the political science department at the University of Houston. Accordingly, as of his death, Ross was the original holder of the Ross M. Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair at the University of Houston.

How many professors have an endowed chair funded and named in their honor during their lifetimes? Such was the excellence of Ross Lence.

Ross was also a John and Rebecca Moores University Scholar at the University of Houston, where he was continually honored with numerous awards for his teaching, including the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award, which annually honors the most outstanding teacher in the state of Texas, (1987), and the Henri Stegemeier Award for the Outstanding Faculty Advisor in North America (1987).

In addition to his superlative teaching talent, Ross’ selfless heart and humanism attracted students like a magnet. His office had the quintessential open door and always resembled a scene from a Robert Altman film with students and colleagues milling in and out carrying on multiple conversations with Ross and each other on the various subjects of the particular day.

Inasmuch as he dedicated his life to teaching and his students, Ross never married, yet he has the largest family of anyone that I have ever known. To enter one of Ross’ classes was literally to be drawn into Ross’ huge family of students, former students, colleagues and friends. The devotion of Ross’ family members was surpassed only by Ross’ devotion to them and his wonderful mother, Nickie, for whom he cared lovingly over the past 25 years.

What was it that made Ross’ life so fulfilling? An experience that I had several years ago with Ross provides some insight into the answer to that question.

I had the privilege of helping Ross coordinate a strategy in regard to a legal matter that had a political component, the details of which are not particularly important. Suffice it to say that it was serious and could have adversely affected much of what Ross had worked for during his professional career. Due to the nature of the problem, we had to work quickly in devising and implementing our strategy.

With but a few phone calls, we were able to put together a legal team of over a half-dozen prominent Houston attorneys, each of whom had been a student of Ross and were instantly willing to provide their services on a pro bono basis (Ross took great pleasure in reminding his university colleagues of his personal legal team, the aggregate hourly billing rate of which was in excess of $2,500).

As we devised and implemented our strategy to resolve the matter, Ross never exhibited even a moment of personal despair over the seriousness of the matter and instead relished the opportunity to engage his old students and friends in matters of legal and political intrigue.

Even when we resolved the matter favorably for Ross after a couple of weeks of intense posturing and negotiation, Ross’ main goal was to arrange the post-resolution party where he could dissect and analyze what had occurred, and revel in the success of his crack legal team.

You see, it was not the reward that he received from the successful resolution of the matter that drove Ross, although he certainly appreciated it. Rather, it was the reward of renewing and deepening the relationships with his former students and old friends — even during one of the most threatening moments of his professional life — that was most rewarding to Ross.

What a special gift it was to have my old mentor and friend remind me of the true source of happiness in his richly-rewarded life.

Ross was diagnosed in August, 2005 with pancreatic cancer, which is particularly pernicious. So, the final 11 months of his life have been draining physically for Ross, although his mother’s loving care undoubtedly extended his life by at least several months.

Consistent with his remarkable nature, Ross used the experience of dealing with terminal illness to provide a remarkable lesson on faith, which he exhibited in a series of confidence-boosting email messages to his extended family over the past 11 months. I have accumulated those email messages in chronological order here — they are an inspiring reflection of the true nature of this fine man, who was literally a conduit of God’s grace.

As regular readers of this blog know, A Man for All Seasons — the story of Sir Thomas More’s conflict with King Henry VIII — is one of my favorite movies, and it was one of Ross’ favorites, too.

Ross particularly enjoyed the scene early in the movie when Sir Thomas attempts unsuccessfully to persuade his student, Richard Rich, to eschew a desire for a political appointment and become a teacher. After rejecting Thomas’ advice, Rich takes a political appointment from Henry’s henchman Cromwell in return for agreeing to betray Thomas.

“Sir Thomas knew that Rich had a corrupt heart and would never be able to resist the temptations of politics,” Ross observed to me.

But then Ross quickly posed the following question with a wry smile.

“But is Thomas also suggesting that a corrupt heart facilitates a great teaching career?”

As I have talked and corresponded with hundreds of Ross’ friends, colleagues and former students over the past several months leading up to his death, I was reminded continually that Ross Lence’s life is proof of the truth of Sir Thomas’ advice to Rich during their exchange that Ross so enjoyed:

Sir Thomas: “Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.”

Richard Rich: “If I was, who would know it?”

Sir Thomas More: “You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.”

Yes, my dear friend Ross, “not a bad public, that.” Your job has been extraordinarily well done. Rest in peace, friend.

A visitation will be held for Ross at the the Settegast-Kopf Co. Funeral Home at 3320 Kirby Drive (77098) beginning at 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 13 to be followed by a Rosary service at 7 p.m. A funeral mass will be held for Ross at 10 a.m. on Friday, July 14 at St. Anne Catholic Church at the corner of Westheimer and Shepard. The University of Houston is planning a memorial service for Ross later this year after the beginning of the fall semester.

Update: “On Teaching” by Ross M. Lence, Ted Estess eulogizes Ross at his funeral, and the Abbeville Institute provides a moving tribute. Finally, the Chronicle’s obituary on Ross includes this online guest book that includes dozens of tributes to Ross from his students, former students, colleagues and friends.

Update II: In a fitting tribute on the final day of classes for the fall semester, the University of Houston hosted a wonderful memorial service for Professor Lence at 1:30 p.m., on Friday, December 1, 2006 in the AD Bruce Religion Center on the UH campus. A reception followed the service at the Commons of the the UH Honors College, and a joyous time was had by all as we exchanged remembrances of this special man.

Bill Monroe, Ross’ dear friend and long-time colleague on the Honors College faculty, did a masterful job of opening and closing the service. He opened the service on the right note by recalling another colleague’s experience with Ross’ often unpredictable and disorienting opinions:

“A colleague and mutual friend said that for over a decade he thought Lence was a liberal Jew from Chicago, only to discover that he was actually a libertarian Catholic from White Fish, Montana.”

The following are the tributes to Ross from his friends at the memorial service:

Bill Monroe Opening and Closing Remarks

Professor Susan Collins (colleague)

Professor Ed Willems (colleague)

Professor Andy Little (former student) presenting Dr. Lence’s essay “On Teaching“

My Tribute (former student)

Orlando Sanchez (former student)

Jeff Dodd (former student)

Ted Estess (colleague)

Update III: James Patterson, another former student of Dr. Lence, wrote this fine remembrance of Ross in 2013 over at the Minding The Campus blog.