In Memory of Peter Tasch, beloved mentor and friend

Peter A. Tasch, scholar, mentor, friend

I can almost see The Scriblerian Office on Berks Mall at Temple University. It was a third floor walk up and our desk was toward the back where a door opened onto an authentic fire escape. It was nice having a door in those old brick offices to catch some small breeze in the days before air conditioning. I can still see Peter sort of bumbling about the cramped space, eyeglasses propped atop his head, turning to me to ask if I’d seen them anywhere. I had found my own absent-minded professor and I loved his gentle, quirky genius.

In 1968 I was a work-study student at Temple. My first assignment had been working as a Spanish-speaking caseworker at Temple University Hospital where I worked with a predominantly Puerto Rican pre-teen pre-natal population. That had been a good job but as a serious English literature major, I had wanted something more in my field. I applied for a position as the ‘office manager’ at an 18th Century Scholarly publication of Temple, The Scriblerian, and was interviewed by a most temperate and shy editor, Professor Peter Tasch, who hired me on the spot. This position was the beginning of more than a job but a lifelong friendship and mentorship that continues. Peter passed on July 24th, 2010, but my relationship with his wife, Alison, daughters Kate and Alex, son Jeremy and their extended families is a great blessing in my life.

My childhood in Mt. Airy, then a developing brick row home ‘enclave’ that sprawled across the northeastern border of the city of Philadelphia on what used to be farmland, was devoid of what one would call intellectual stimulation. I was born to an older father who had only a third grade education, coming as he did from an immigrant family that was raised, as he liked to say, in the ‘school of hard knocks’ in a turn-of-the-twentieth century Brooklyn ghetto. My dad was
super smart but under-educated. And my mother, who delivered me as her only live birth at the advanced age of 40, had suffered what was then undiagnosed post- partum depression. As was common in that era of evolving mental health, she was treated with a regime that included uppers and downers and even electric shock therapy, resulting in irreparable damage to her physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. She, like my dad, had been incredibly bright, having had a brief career as a supervisor during World War II at Philadelphia’s war munitions’ plant, the Frankfort Arsenal, but having been raised in an orphanage, she too had only attained a third grade education. This left me an inheritor of great intellectual potential but limited experience.

And then I met Peter.

As an 18 year-old I entered university life with a boundless academic appetite sans scholarly discipline. That Peter hired me to work at his most scholarly journal still mystifies me, but from our initial contact we clicked and thus began a most unlikely friendship that has lasted over time and distance.

As office manager of The Scriblerian I was responsible for maintaining the journal’s vast database of libraries which back then even included universities behind the iron curtain. Part of my job was to literally address, package, and send each issue of the journal insuring that it made it to each university library possible. Contact with scholarly contributors was another part of my responsibility and Peter praised and appreciated my organizational skills and cogent and professional communications. These skills were honed and rewarded by his generous guidance.

Peter never wielded his intellectual prowess but rather gently wooed me, and countless others who came to adore his gentle wisdom and quirky humor, by example. While I never became one of his students, preferring the Chaucerian and Shakespearean eras to his beloved 18th century, I nevertheless considered myself Peter’s protégé. In more general terms I was very much a baby duckling imprinted by his calm manner and sheer intellect: his qualities that shaped me for life. Peter took on an informal role as my protector from his somewhat crusty ‘business’ colleague whose abruptness could be quite abrasive and intimidating. The verbal onslaught often brought me to tears but Peter was always there afterwards to explain in calm and clear terms how to rectify any mistakes I may have made. Such patience and professionalism influenced me for life.

Additionally, in those days Peter’s wife, Alison, worked at Temple and through observing their relationship I came to understand and admire what I considered an educated and refined family life. I venerated their relationship and their family.

Always an industrious if not quite brilliant student, Peter found many extra- curricula tasks for me at Temple, including appointing me as the graduate student head of tutors for Temple’s maverick English Language Enrichment Center (ELECT) that helped disadvantaged students to improve their language skills in order to matriculate. Peter so trusted me that eventually the Tasch family allowed my good friends to become their summer home sitters whilst they vacationed at their upstate New York farmhouse retreat.

Thereafter, I simply adopted and was adopted by the entire family. I have become life-long friends with each Tasch child, and in what became a full circle from my apprenticeship with Peter, the youngest daughter Alex came to work an intern for my public relations firm.

At home with the Tasch clan and chef, my friend, Nancy Carolan, Thanksgiving 2008

The Tasch family has been a constant in my life for over 40 years, and I feel the loss of Peter deeply alongside each member. I was blessed by having a mentor with the qualities and charisma of Peter Tasch and attest that his influence has helped me become the person I am today. A light has gone out among us.

The Purr of a Cat

Here's short film, actually a moving poem entitled, The Purr of a Cat that I wrote (and here narrated) as the preface quote for the upcoming book: The Adventures of Yin & Yang: Snoepje and the Pizza Box scheduled to be released this coming autumn, 2010. I hope you like it!