On September 17th, Lyman suffered cardiac arrest at home and was admitted to the hospital. The police crisis team spread the word that this was going to be a fatal heart attack and the news spread like wildfire. But they forgot to tell Lyman. He made it through the night, allowing the love and support of his family and friends to surround him over the coming days.
In the morning a strong contingent arrived in the waiting room from Emerson Waldorf School where Lyman was the acting Board President and Daniel and Rebecca are in the third and second grade. Soon, co-workers of Lyman's from UNC Hospitals started pouring in, anxious for news of his recovery. The phone began to ring with calls from folks who worked with Lyman in Boy Scouts. Everyone offered their prayers.
The support from all these groups was overwhelming to the whole family. The people at the school arranged for rides for the children to the hospital every afternoon, as well as dinners every night. The people at the hospital brought wonderful snacks to us in the waiting room that helped sustain us during the day. Most of all we appreciated the visits from those who came and shared time and stories with us during the period of waiting.
Every afternoon when Daniel and Rebecca came to the hospital from school, they brought piles of cards that the children in the various classes had made for Lyman. For some of these children Lyman had been their recorder teacher, for others their Scoutmaster, for still others just a parent of one of their classmates, and for some just a familiar face on the playground. Yet they all reached out to Lyman to express their hope for his recovery. We enjoyed reading him all these cards so beautifully drawn and written by the children.
Others from the work-place and the scouting community also sent messages for us to read to Lyman as he lay in a coma. Reminiscences of a trip taken with Lyman or a helping hand extended by Lyman all brought tears to our eyes as we read them aloud to him.
Music played such an important part in Lyman's life that we thought music might be the way to bring him back to us. Lyman's older daughters and his two younger children joined their voices in song at his bedside. Musicians from the school brought their voices, their recorders, and their lyres to brighten his hospital room. He seemed to respond more to the music than to anything else.
Family came from all over to spend time with Lyman. Nathan came home from High Mowing School, a boarding school in New Hampshire. Cheryl Rettie and Lisa Poirier, Lyman's older daughters, camped out in the waiting room, along with Lisa's husband Dan Poirier. Lyman's sister Melanie from Baton Rouge and his brother Sean from Greensboro, North Carolina as well as his brother David and his mother Alex from Chapel Hill all spent significant amounts of time with him. It was a time of real coming together for the Ripperton family.
Members of my family came too: my mother, my father, and my sister Judy traveled from Pennsylvania to offer their support.
Yet, despite all our hopes and prayers, his condition worsened. The family maintained a vigil around the clock. We sang to him using our well-worn copies of Rise Up Singing. We shared memories. We massaged Lyman's arms and legs. We held his hands. We felt like midwives supporting his transition to his heavenly birth. Lisa, echoing a phrase her father had used often with her when they were hiking, kept saying "just another eighth of a mile, Dad!" We made sure that he was kept comfortable and surrounded by those he loved and who loved him in his final days.
On the night that he died, I was in the room with him, along with his mother, his older daughter Cheryl and her mother Gloria, Lyman's first wife. We were all there for several hours together. I left about 9 o'clock and Cheryl walked her mother to the parking garage not long thereafter. It was while he was alone with his mother that he took leave of us and crossed the threshold. His mother said that he passed peacefully, opening his eyes wide just before he passed. She told him we all loved him and then he breathed his last.
After he died we all gathered in his room once more. We read the Compline
service using the leaflet that Lisa had prepared for us. Within this
service, which is typically the last one before retiring in the evening,
there is a prayer that Lyman and I had recited with the younger children
for years at their bedtime:
Guide us waking, O Lord
and guard us sleeping,
That awake we may watch with Christ
and asleep we may rest in peace.
We concluded with two songs: "All Praise to Thee My God This Night" and "Dona Nobis Pacem", then Tammy Lee, the priest, gave the final blessing. Lyman had always wanted his remains scattered in the Sierras. Since we felt that we needed some of him here, we decided to bury his ashes here but to clip some of his hair to take to the Sierras at a later time, so we cut some of his hair to take home. Cheryl closed the eyes of her father, as she had closed the eyes of her husband, David Rettie, several years before.
We had planned the church service for Lyman earlier in the week. I chose the readings and Cheryl and Lisa selected the hymns. Tammy Lee would preach the homily, Stephen Elkins-Williams would celebrate the Eucharist, Dr. Quinn would play the organ, and the Senior Choir would sing. Lyman died on Thursday, September 28th, but we didn't have the service until the following Saturday, October 7th, which allowed people lots of time to make arrangements.
And come they did! The church was packed. The family was seated in the front on the right and the scouts in uniform were seated on the left. It was a beautiful service. The music was wonderful and the homily (http://www.mainlesson.com/lyman/homily.html) was uplifting. After the service in the church the priest carried the ashes out of the church with the family and scouts following. We gathered in the semicircular area in front of the chapel to commit Lyman's ashes to the ground. After the priest put the first of the dirt on the box, he offered me the shovel. Declining, I used my hand instead to scoop up a handful of dirt and drop it onto the box. To my surprise and delight everyone followed suit: first the family members, then scouts, then friends. It was a beautiful day, the kind of crisp October day that Lyman enjoyed so much. His final resting place is midway between the door to the chapel and the Celtic cross that was recently erected, on which is inscribed "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."
The next day, October 8th, there was another service, primarily for the members of the Emerson Waldorf School community. Various teachers, board members, and parents shared memories of Lyman. His daughter Lisa introduced herself to the school community in a very moving way, after which she read a couple of Psalms, and led the group in prayer. Musical offerings, including a vocal rendition of "Joy of My Heart" and several instrumental pieces, rounded out the service at the church. Then we proceeded to a ceremonial tree planting at the school. Six dawn redwood trees were planted in Lyman's honor, one large tree representing Lyman, and five smaller trees each representing one of his children. A rustic granite bench offers a resting place for quiet contemplation amid this grove of dawn redwoods. Other plantings will be made in this boggy area as time goes on, with the first being the iris that Melanie, Lyman's sister, sent from Louisiana.
Someone in their remarks called Lyman a bridge-builder and he was certainly that, even in his dying. Because he lingered so long, the family members had time to gather together and heal their wounds. Daniel and Rebecca have lost a father, but they have gained two sisters and a brother-in-law! We are delighted to have regular contact with Cheryl and Lisa and Dan again. Lisa is taking the children to Junior choir every Wednesday afternoon, as Cheryl did for Nathan so many years ago. All of them came to help us carve pumpkins for Halloween.
In his dying, Lyman also paved the way for lots of other relationships to blossom and flourish. Friends and neighbors are going out of their way to befriend us and include us in activities. Lyman and I had often talked about ways families might do more things together, as families. The importance of that has been underscored for us this fall and so now we will work with others in various settings to make sharing time with other families more the norm than the exception.
All the waiting in the hospital gave me time to think about the support I would need on the home front after Lyman's passing. Having someone who could fix breakfast (and lunches) for the children and take them to school in the morning would allow me to keep my schedule of going to work early and getting home early. We are blessed that Megan McMullen, who is the director of the after-school program at the school this year and was an assistant last year, has come to live with us. She has such a kind and gentle touch with the children that their mornings are a lot calmer now than they were when Lyman and I were in charge! As we get to know her better we are finding out all kinds of interesting connections. For example, she was born three months early as Daniel was; she, too was due in October, but born in July. Her mother served as a Scoutmaster, as Lyman did. She likes camping, craft projects, and reading. It is fun to watch her explore her options as a young adult!
I am grateful to Lyman that we were all in such a good place when he passed. Both Daniel and Rebecca are in strong classes in Emerson Waldorf School, with wonderful teachers with lots of classroom experience under their belts. Daniel's teacher, Eric Boesch, came to us at the beginning of first grade from Edinburgh, Scotland, where he had been a class teacher for many years. His wife, Ingeborg, is the children's German teacher. Rebecca's teacher, Nancy Preitz, hails from Dubois, Pennsylvania, and did her undergraduate work at Penn State. She has been a teacher at the school almost since its inception. In Waldorf schools, the class teacher stays with the children from Grade 1 through Grade 8, so we are grateful to have that as a wonderful stabilizing element in their lives.
Daniel made the leap into reading this year and now, as often as not, you can find him holed up somewhere reading a good book. Despite his mild cerebral palsy affecting his legs mostly, he keeps up with his classmates pretty well. He has a phenomenal memory and can give a fair rendition of any story after just a single hearing. He loves to tell jokes and enjoys conversing with the adults around him. He joined the Junior Choir at the Chapel of the Cross this fall, following in the footsteps of his sisters Cheryl and Lisa and his brother Nathan. His early apprehensions about his ability to measure up to Dr. Quinn's standards have subsided and now he takes true pleasure in the singing. We are working on building up his endurance in walking so he will be ready for Boy Scout outings when he is 11. He is most pleased that he learned to ride a bike this year, with his record being 10 times around the quarter mile track.
Rebecca is as active and busy as ever. When she is not twirling around the floor in her tap shoes, she's starting another beading project or writing another letter. To the delight of her mother, she's taken an especially active interest in her dolls this year, stitching clothes and knitting shawls for them. She, too, shares her father's interest in music. She joined the Training Choir this year after Lyman was hospitalized and is looking forward to joining the Junior Choir herself when she is in third grade. Life is never dull when Rebecca is around!
Nathan is glad to report that he has mailed in all his college applications! He is finishing up his senior year at High Mowing School in Wilton, New Hampshire, and then will be heading back to North Carolina for college having applied to both UNC Chapel Hill and UNC Asheville. I think his preference is for UNC Asheville where he's made a strong connection with the cross-country coach. He made a fine showing in cross country this year, coming in first in the Lakes Region Championship. He won the 5K race with a time of 16:34, trimming 27 seconds off the course record! It was a special moment for Lyman this spring when he had the opportunity to present the Eagle Award to Nathan at a special court of honor. Nathan was one of three boys who received the Eagle Award this spring who had been together with Lyman since Cub Scouts.
I was glad to return to my job at SAS on October 11th, after being out for over 3 weeks. My co-workers solved some of the little problems in my areas of responsibility while I was gone, but they left enough of the thornier issues unresolved that I felt I was still needed! I feel blessed that I have such a wonderful team of people to work with, and such interesting projects to work on. At the same time, I am grateful to Lyman for helping me get started with a project that I will devote more time to as I get older, and make the transition, first, to part-time work, and later, to full retirement. I have always been interested in children's literature and in April 1999, it occurred to me that I could combine my skills in computing with my knowledge of children's literature to publish classic children's books on the Internet. He helped me get the hardware and software I needed, provided training to me in using the PC, and got a web site set up for me. Since he was gone for the month of July, he had given me instructions on how to do everything I needed to do to maintain the site. But I needed to take the next step and publicize the site. I did that in October by sending the links to the titles I have to the On-Line Books Page at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/. Now, readership is gradually increasing. If you'd like to read more about what I'm doing please visit The Baldwin Project at http://www.mainlesson.com/.
It will take lots of different people to carry on the work that Lyman was doing, both inside and outside the home. But I have been gratified by the response of individuals who have stepped forward to take on some of the reponsibilities he carried in scouting and school administration.
The work of establishing a high school at Emerson Waldorf School is proceeding as well, thanks to so many donations to the Lyman Ripperton Memorial High School Fund of Emerson Waldorf School, 6211 New Jericho Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27516. Just a couple of years away from retirement, Lyman was already planning his second career! He was looking forward to becoming a Waldorf High School Math teacher and had just begun the Waldorf High School Teacher Training Program offered by the Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, New Hampshire. The trainees participate for a month every summer for three years, taking courses in such varied subjects as drama, eurythmy, and music in addition to intensive courses in the subjects they intend to teach. Lyman devoted much of the spring to getting ready for this endeavour. The training itself he found exhilarating and he came home with renewed enthusiasm for his second career.
You might say that enthusiasm marked everything Lyman did. When I first started working for him at UNC Hospitals in the Management Systems and Data Processing Department 22 years ago, I noticed a poster prominently displayed in his office: a koala bearing the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." The children and I are carrying on his tradition of enthusiasm by looking forward with enthusiasm to whatever life holds in store for us. We cherish his memory, and expect that he will continue to inspire us as we go forth into the world to further his work.
If you have memories of Lyman that you would like to share with us, we would be delighted to receive them. You can mail them to Lisa Ripperton, 1705 Audubon Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 or email them to Lisa@MainLesson.com. I have posted the contents of this letter at http://www.mainlesson.com/lyman/, as well as Lyman's obituary and the homily offered at his funeral. If there is enough interest, I will also post memories of Lyman, so please indicate whether the remembrance you send is just for the family or is something you would be willing to share with a broader audience.
Blessings of the season on you all!