On March 4, just outside the Ruth Taylor Theatre building, Trinity Professor and prominent sociologist Dr. Michael Kearl collapsed from a heart attack. He later died in the hospital. A thoughtful, bold, expansive thinker, Dr. Kearl was also a warm, generous person with a rare capacity for mirth. For the students who took classes from him, he was powerful and erudite, thought-provoking about ideas and attentive to theirs. For the faculty who had the honor of calling him a colleague, he was a firebrand, a fierce advocate of the liberal arts, yet also a gentle mentor and, for many, a genuine friend.
Dr. Kearl — Mike to his friends and colleagues — would have been the best person on campus to make sense of our collective experience of his singular loss. Besides his caring mentorship and teaching, he was a leading thinker about the sociology of death. It may seem to us that his devastating loss was merely unspeakably senseless, a deep wound in the Trinity community. But Mike Kearl’s monograph Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying (Oxford University Press: 1989) argues that “death is the central force shaping our social life and order.” In this characteristically interdisciplinary book, he draws from anthropology, philosophy, religion, economics and psychology to note how significant our perspectives on what death means are for social change and communal identity. Dr. Kearl understood better than almost anyone how the way a community deals with death shapes its ethics and its care for the living.
Mike Kearl would be eager to help us; he was always eager to help everyone. During my seven years as a faculty member here, I’ve encountered so many stories of Mike shepherding young professors (myself included) into the culture of Trinity, taking care to understand them with the kind of empathy matched only by his curiosity and integrity. As with his students, he saw new faculty members as subjects emerging into a world that they would both become incorporated into and help shape.
Since his death almost three weeks ago, memories, praise and testimonies to his brilliance and kindness have poured from every sector: alums, colleagues, students, administrators. They’ve said that he was passionate and compassionate, bold and generous, intensively focused yet widely versed in many disciplines. What would Dr. Kearl, the insightful sociologist, say about this outpouring? We don’t know, of course. He would likely point out aspects we would never otherwise consider. But I’d like to think he would also recognize in our collective mourning — culminating in a “Celebration of Life” in his honor March 24 at 5pm in the Stieren Theater — that ours is a community that values big spirits, open hearts, curious, probing minds and an enthusiastic love for our fellow creatures. Fellow travelers on the train of life, our shared mortality permeates our community with the possibility of surrender in the face of loss. We surrender to the unknown knowing only that we are not alone.
This is the community you will leave behind in just a couple months. Only you, like Mike, will never be far from Trinity’s memory, nor will Trinity soon leave yours. Loving, curious, open-minded, playful, interdisciplinary, holistic, bold, larger than life: Mike Kearl embodied the best of Trinity. By mourning and celebrating his contribution to our community, we reinvigorate our commitment to it and carry his spirit forward. When you graduate in a couple months, you will undergo a ritual of moving on, though of course you will be able to return as well as stay in touch. But even if you never came back, each idea you’ve expressed, play you’ve performed, experiment you’ve conducted, paper you’ve written, question you’ve asked, friend you’ve consoled, game you’ve played, book you’ve read — each has been part of the constantly growing, and constantly changing, flow that makes Trinity so vital to the generations it creates, and who continue to create it.
We will all miss Mike Kearl intensely. By remembering him and recognizing his part in what made this such a special place, we will carry his legacy.
Kyle Gillette
Class Marshal
