THE MIGHTY OAK HAS FALLEN

“He [Dr. John David Broome] lived his life like a mighty oak tree with deep roots in his Christian faith and many branches that reached to others in love, encouragement, and support.

                                                     Obituary,

                                                     Dr. John David Broome (1934-2025)

“The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do”

                                                    John Ruskin

“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.”

                                                    Bob Proctor

Yesterday Dr. Broome’s daughter Erica sent me the message that I knew was coming but hoped to avoid: her dad had died peacefully in the hospital while under sedation. He had fought a valiant battle against an illness that afflicted his heart and sapped his strength. The once tall and strong man with short-cropped hair that I first met during my college Freshman year (1966)—a mighty oak of a man if there ever was one—had fallen.

I sent a note to Erica trying to assure her that her father was—at that very moment—greeted by the Lord Jesus himself with the words “well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.” On the other side of the Great Divide, John Broome will be full of life, for an eternity, with the glorified body of a thirty-year-old, have the mental capacity to understand all the answers to an earthly lifetime of questions, and meet (and somehow recognize) his beloved Mavis.

Therein lies the hope for each of us who knew the mighty oak as teacher, mentor, role model, counselor, and friend.

I will be one of three speakers to honor Dr. Broome’s memory and legacy at a funeral service next week held in the First Baptist Church in downtown Williamsburg, Kentucky, where he attended and served for 60 years. Many years ago, when Ima and I stopped by his house for a visit, he told me he wanted me to speak at his funeral. I was flattered and honored. I agreed to his request at the same time saying I hoped that would be fifty years in the future. I remember, at the time, he was having problems with his feet and circulation in his legs. I bent down and prayed for his legs with all the faith I could muster.

“Sigh.”

There was a time when God whispered into my spirit that I needed to personally thank all those individuals who had meant so much to me on my life’s journey. My first stop was at Dr. Broome’s house where, with my eyes brimming with tears, I sincerely thanked him for being such a steadfast believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and such a wonderful role model—as a father and a teacher—in my life.

Years ago, I wrote a missive “An Old Professor’s Reverie,” that reminded me in some ways of Dr. Broome, who spent 48 years at Cumberland College (now The University of the Cumberlands) as history and theology instructor, counselor, advisor, and long-time campus athletic eligibility representative. Below is an excerpt from that missive:  

The other night, after watching yet another black-and-white episode of Perry Mason on MeTV, I was ready to shuffle off to bed for the evening when my attention was snared by the opening scenes of an old Twilight Zone show.

The episode entitled “The Changing of the Guard”—written by Rod Serling— was, simply put, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen on television (and believe me, over the years I have watched plenty of television).

The episode started out with a kindly old English literature professor, Ellis   Fowler, teaching his classroom of several boys at the Rock Spring School, a fictional boy’s prep school in Vermont. It was the final class session of the term (the boys had   already taken their finals) and were predictably bored as Professor Fowler read them    a final poem before their Christmas Break. As the bell rang and before the boys could leap from their seats to escape, Fowler tells them they each passed their final exams. All of them are elated. Then he says “in my 51-years of teaching, I’m never had a   class like this. An entire class of dunderheads! But genuinely nice dunderheads and I have no doubt you’ll each go on to make something of yourselves.”

I loved that scene.

I suppose that each of us who have taught for a living, for any appreciable     length of time, have wanted to say that very same thing—or words very similar—on   the last day of class.

Most of us resist the impulse, however, and hope for a better crop of students the next time around.

At any rate, in the next scene Fowler is called to the Dean’s office and informed that his services are no longer needed at the school as he needs to make way for younger blood.

Fowler is understandably depressed by this bad news and begins to question whether he has really accomplished anything significant in his half-century-plus in    the classroom.

On a snow-covered Christmas Eve, his depression wins out. Unphased by Christmas caroling students or the reassuring words of his kindly maid, Fowler takes    a pistol from his desk drawer and walks to a campus statue of the famous educator Horace Mann. On the statue’s plinth is Mann’s quote “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Fowler, muttering to himself that in his long    life of teaching he had won no such victories, lifted the gun to his temple.

Just then, a phantom classroom bell rings.

Curious, Fowler lowers his handgun for the moment and returns to the school    and his classroom to figure out the reason for the ringing bell. In his classroom, he   sees apparitions of several of his former students. He recognizes each of them and   calls them by name. One tells him how a poem Professor Fowler read to their class gave him courage on the battlefield at Iwo Jima—where he posthumously received    the Medal of Honor. Another of Fowler’s former students, who died of leukemia after exposure to X-rays during his efforts to find a cure for cancer, relayed how one of Fowler’s poems had provided him strength in that moment. Yet another applauded Fowler for his words of duty and honor which carried him through the tragedy at Pearl Harbor where he sacrificially died after saving twelve other men. The classroom was crammed full of young men and former students, now dead, each thanking Fowler in their own way for his classroom words of inspiration. Moved to tears by the experience, Fowler watched each of the apparitions disappear as the phantom bell tolled anew. 

He returned to his home a changed man.

I hope to relate a revised version of that story at Dr. Broome’s funeral service. I will ask the attendees to imagine, as if looking through a spiritual prism, a similar gathering of apparitions of all the thousands of young students, friends, colleagues, and advisees touched by Dr. Broome. That gathering, I will suggest to them, would extend beyond the church sanctuary to beyond the Cumberland River at one end of Williamsburg, up the hill to the college campus and beyond to the athletic fields.

That was the extent of this great man’s—this giant oak’s—influence.

I wonder how many lives he changed for eternity.

I was one of those lives. I came to Cumberland as a pimple-faced, Beatles-like greasy-haired teenager with a below-basement-level of self-esteem and confidence. But Dr. Broome saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. As I think back on it, he became my role model in large part because he exhibited several characteristics that resonated within my spirit and that I have sought to imitate in my own life, and subsequent classroom experiences.

First and foremost, Dr. Broome was a man of deep faith. He was unapologetic about the importance of Jesus Christ in his life. He was the genuine article.

I needed to see that.

Secondly, Dr. Broome passionately loved history. Unlike much of the history taught by my high school teachers—many of whom were coaches first and teachers second—his history classes were more than a rote memorization of dates and events. His history lectures were alive, a flowing narrative containing real human actors responding, in many cases, to events and circumstances beyond their control. I loved his classroom energy. He obviously loved what he was doing and, for me at least, it was contagious. Not only did all that resonate with my own nascent love for history, but he provided for me an exemplar for professional classroom behavior.

Thirdly, Dr. Broome sincerely loved his students. Each and every one of them. He was involved in our lives. He invited us to his house for spaghetti dinners or to try boiled peanuts, sat with us at ballgames, and took us on class trips.

Fourthly, he provided a role model for what a Christian home and marriage should look like. His love for his wife Mavis was obvious for all to see as well as his love for their three girls. One of my fondest memories of those years was when I would babysit the three girls on occasion and draw pictures for them.

Fifthly, Dr. Broome shared my passion for sports. He loved college sports and was the biggest fan on campus. He also enjoyed pro sports—he was lifelong St. Louis Cardinals and New Orleans Saints fan. In those early years he was a formidable presence on the intramural fields. He was personally involved with the college teams and the players.

Finally, Dr. Broome had a sneaky sense of humor. If I close my eyes, I can still see his unique smile and hear his laughter. On one occasion, I was invited by the alumni association to speak about my times on campus. I talked about old Mahan Hall and my roommates, especially “Big Ron” Stephens, a hometown friend and college track star. One evening, one of our fellow students who roomed next door—we called him “Thumper”—wandered into our room in the middle of the night. None of us locked our doors in those years. Thumper was sleepwalking, or at least that is what he said, walked by our beds in his pajamas and walked straight to the old hissing and spitting steam cast-iron radiator by the window in our room. Thumper pulled down his pajamas, proceeded to piss all over the heater, turned around and walked out of the room.

The attendees loved my story but the then college president, who had a couple potential mega-donors with him, h-a-a-r-r-umped like a big frog. Dr. Broome, sitting in the audience, broke out in laughter, slapping the table. It was his kind of humor. The then-president was less than amused.

I was never invited back to speak.

I will miss you Dr. Broome.

Farewell great oak …