One evening this week, unable to sleep and thinking of my friend Peter Greer, who was dying, I went downstairs to find a book. I pulled down the two volume collection of Meditations, selected pieces from among those given on Thursday mornings in the church on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy by faculty or by senior students. Peter gave several over the course of his teaching career, and some of those are in these books. Opening the first volume, I saw the dedication page to James Valhouli, an English teacher who died in my first winter at the school. I had not known him, and I was still getting my bearings in that sometimes intimidating and austere place when he fell through the ice on the Exeter River and drowned. It was terrible, and bewildering, but not personal. All I knew of him were a few stories, a black and white photo, and a favorite poem. The vivid details of his death were more real to me than he was, and when I think of him, it’s only as I cross that same river.
The dedication page of the second volume bears the name of another English teacher, Rex McGuinn, who died while out for a run four years after I graduated. I had one class with him, and when I heard of his death, I conjured all the memories I had–an impressive mustache, a soft, Southern lilt, generosity and kindness toward my own poor attempts at writing the required poems for his class. We read Blake, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and once we went to his house, and I was still young enough for this to strike me as strange and unsettling, a vestige of the childish belief that teachers live at school. In any case, I knew him, though we never became friends or kept in touch.
Peter’s name, I’m sure, will appear on some dedication page somewhere, likely many. He was popular, beloved, one, I’m sure, of the most heavily visited faculty members when reunion weekends rolled around. When he was my teacher, he did his best to draw me out of my muteness in class. When we met in conferences over my writing, he encouraged me, prodded me, challenged me. Chronically low on self esteem, I was flattered but suspicious of his praise. In my four years at school, I never really overcame the muteness in class. When the course was over, the depth of my shyness kept me from ever speaking to him or dropping by to visit.
In my senior year, Peter’s wife, Anja, also a teacher at Exeter, died of cancer. In the weeks leading up to her death, I kept a secret vigil. A day student, I commuted to campus each day, and in the evenings, I would take a detour to drive past their big house halfway between the school and home. There was nothing to it but driving by, slowing just slightly, and looking to see which windows were lighted. I had never been inside, and I didn’t know the layout of the rooms, but I came to believe that one upstairs window, which was always illuminated, must have been where she was. I drove past every night, and thought of them in there. I told no one about this habit.
After Anja died, I wrote Peter a note. Then, I could not conceive of calling him anything but Mr. Greer, and so I addressed it that way. I drew a little sketch of a Northern Redbud tree, painstakingly coloring hundreds of the tiny pink buds, and included a few short, self-conscious lines expressing the inadequacy of my words. Less than a week later, he was back on campus, and all of us, awkward teenagers anyway, suffered the additional faltering awkwardness of trying to speak with a man whose wife had just died. Mercifully, I have no memory of what I said. But I have kept a journal since I was eight years old, and in an entry from April 27, 1998, I wrote, “I was sitting in the hall by the English classrooms when Mr. Greer came by. I saw the four, neat white teeth of his smile and he crouched in front of me and said, ‘I know I’ve already told you this, but that note was really wonderful. I just keep showing it to everyone. You said in it ‘I don’t expect that my little words would make a difference,’ but I want you to know, it did make a great deal of difference,’ and he laid his palm briefly on my knee.”
My last month and a half at Exeter were consumed by boyfriend musings and trysts, tormented decisions about college, and feckless participation in track meets. I circled around Peter, watching him, noting how he seemed, what he said, surreptitiously watching him clean out Anja’s classroom, walking down the hallway with a potted fern in each hand. I recorded my dreams in my journal too. In many, I was being chased. In one, I was crossing a river on a bridge of rotted planks, each one inscribed with a name and a death date. After my graduation, Peter and I settled into a semi-regular exchange of notes and emails. He prodded me to call him Peter, I resisted, and we settled on “Peter Mr. Greer” or PMG, for short. The aimless summer between graduation and when I went off to college, I rode my bike past his house often. Unmoored in my freshman year at UMass, his notes held me to my own center. I found my place gradually, and still we kept in touch, and I finally was able to call him just plain Peter. He came to our wedding. He wrote congratulations on my first child, my second. He made a good marriage; he got his diagnosis. He and Dale lived snugly in their fine little house with their fine little garden. They traveled; they stayed home. Looking through our notes now, I marvel at their frankness. He had once said he and I had a certain diffidence in common. It seemed we were able to write each other so freely because of, not in spite of it. Both of us were capable of being lively, gregarious in conversation, yet both of us often felt an urge to travel through a crowd with our heads down, unnoticed, even by friends.
In my last note to him, I wrote in thanks. Over the years of our friendship and our correspondence, he had shown me how to be a teacher, a friend, a bird watcher, a reader, how to be contentedly married. While I was a student at Exeter, I gradually came into my gifts, helped by several marvelous teachers. David Weber, Ralph Sneeden, Harvey Knowles–with their encouragement, I gained in confidence, and began to think of myself, hesitantly, shyly, as a writer. But my skill in writing remained, to me, abstract and with a shallow purpose, like a parlor trick I could trot out to distract or dazzle. Writing to Peter, and being written to by him, was my first education in what my writing could do for someone. I looked at the effect my words had wrought on a friend and my own understanding of my gift was changed utterly. Exeter taught me to write for the sheer aesthetic pleasure of it, the keenness of expression, revising for meaning and expression and tone. All of that is technique, and without technique, the meaning will be muddy, or lost entirely. But Peter taught me about the meaning itself.
After a shaky fall of feeling lost in the crowds at a big state school, I was beginning to regain my footing. In the winter of my first year at UMass, I made this entry on the last page of my journal,
“I emailed Mr. Greer tonight, nervously and carefully composing a two paragraph note. He inhabits such a strange place in my heart, at some great depth there. I miss him, and I worry about him, but I don’t know how to tell him any of it. He spoke to that same thing when he wrote to me, saying he knows what I mean; the current underneath my words is what I send him, and he hears it, and I gratefully continue writing.”
You were lucky to have such a great teacher. I had one too, but I didn’t realize how great she had been until I became an adult. They can teach you without your even realizing that you’re being taught.
I was lucky indeed.
Without great teachers there would be no great men or women. Their words give us direction and their encouragement helps us grow. What a pity there arent more of them about.
I know. I’ve had more than my fair share of them in my life, and it’s made all the difference.
Thanks for this. I am “an adult” a PEA alum class of “74 but I went through a bit of what you described with Peter myself after I graduated. He became a deep and wonderful friend, was my first “Editor” when he and David Weber first decided to publish the essays in the volume called Exeter Remembered- Transformations. I saw him many times in those decades since then, played flute at Anja’s service and talked to him about his own illness, and dying. I didn’t know how serious and how fast it all happened. But when I found out, I planned a trip to Exeter the next day. I was too late. I felt such sadness having missed my chance to tell him all that he meant to me. He was important to so many though and considered himself a lucky man. In fact, I believe I was told that those were close to his last words. Thanks for posting this. Julie Scolnik
Thank you, Julie. I would absolutely believe that those were very nearly the last words he uttered. It would be just like him. Thanks again, and my condolences, from one of his friends to another.
Do remember Peter’s first wife, Barbara Tsairis, who bore him his beautiful daughter Alexa. He remained a beloved friend to her. And she to him. She has suffered a great loss.
I have been thinking of Lexie a great deal, and thus of her mother too. I never had the privilege of meeting her, but I know this must be a very hard loss for her as well. Thank you for adding her name. I had not known it.
I am sorry for the losst of your friend and teacher. What a touching and beautifully written tribute to your mentor and friend.
Thank you so much. I like to think he’d be proud.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I graduated from Exeter in ’97, and I had both Peter and Anja Greer as teachers. Mr. Greer has a very special place in my heart. When I was taking his Land and Literature class, he helped me through the death of my grandmother, who had basically raised me. I will never forget how he called me after reading a piece I had written about it, the first I had been able to write, and gave such words of encouragement and offered to talk to me about it. I remember when I came back the following year for some of my friends graduation in the class of 98, after his wife had passed, and we shared this hug, this moment, an unspoken thanks for everything he had done and an acknowledgement of his lose…
His class was where I really started to gain confidence in my writing, as well. When I think back at my time at Exeter, his class is the first to come to mind and the one I have the most wonderful memories of. He will be missed, but I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to have him as a teacher.
He had the greatest gift for that–making people feel at ease, and loved, and thought of. I’m going to miss him, but I, too, am mostly grateful to have known him.
I knew Peter longer than most Exonians, because as 7th and 8th graders we played against each other in junior golf tournaments throughout New Hampshire. That’s where he developed the nickname “Hooks” which I called him from then on. At Exeter, he was a crew coxswain at the time that I was rowing here, and later Captain of the golf team. Upon joining the PEA faculty, he became a close friend of my parents, Hammy and Sally Bissell,who remained in Exeter upon Dad’s retirement after 43 years on the faculty. He also came to know our daughter, Katie, a PG in the class of ’95. I had the good fortune to see Peter at least annually upon my visits to Exeter which occasionally involved sitting in on his classes. But most of all, I will remember Peter as a genuine nice guy who always had a ready smile whenever we got together. Rest In Peace, Hooks. Jack Bissell ’58
Thank you so much for this! It’s that ready smile I find I miss already. Also, I, like most of the Exeter universe, adored Hammy as he walked the fields while I was playing soccer or running for the track team. An institution.
Thank you Sarah, for sharing those memories. I was really touched by your words. I appreciate Peter’s gift of friendship, and his encouragement to describe the tree. You have to see it to describe it, to know it, to love it… to miss it. Thank you Peter. I miss you.
Thanks for reading, Matt. I’m glad to have helped a bit with my few words.
Hi, for some reason I recently googled Peter Greer and this came up. It was delightful to read.
I am PEA ’77, and Mr. Greer was my English 31 teacher – Hardy, Eliot, Hawthorne, Keats, Yeats were some of the authors and poems he exposed us to. It was the 5:25 class and the faculty kids in their plastic wheeled “Hot Wheels” would make a racket outside our windows, going down the macadamed sidewalks, since their home was in Wheelwright. We never minded, and carried on. During that time Mr. Greer was married to his first wife, and I remember when his daughter was born; they were faculty in Webster at the time and it was a big deal for everyone. As an aside, I recall her being a gorgeously beautiful woman.
After I graduated and then went on to college and a busy career in consulting, I was invited back to speak at Exeter. This was maybe ’92 or ’93. I had done my thesis at Princeton on the woman’s suffrage movement and abolitionism in 19c America, so I was quite hot on the topic of equal rights and opportunities. I spoke on the need for girls to have role models and that I looked forward to the time when the pictures on the walls in the assembly hall were of women too and not only men. And then I had some fiery quote written by a woman about how she had to work, give birth to and raise kids, feed the family, and then have orgasms at night for her demanding husband. The reading was quite racy – I had wondered if I should read it, but decided “why not?” — and the girls especially in the assembly gave me a crazy and wild standing ovation, but a lot of the faculty were a bit bewildered and didn’t know how to acknowledge it. It was only 15 years or so after i had graduated so many of the faculty who taught me were still there. There was a mixture of discomfort and reticent applause from them…
Anyway, the FIRST person who came bounding up the assembly hall steps to the podium when I was done was Mr. Greer. He was joyful, he was appreciative, and he made me feel like a million bucks. I had always enjoyed tracking his life … his marriage to Anja was well after I had left — and was happy to know he was fulfilled and happy – but seeing him in this way just encapsulated for me what he was all about. Brimming with support, non-judgmental, open to challgnging thoughts, enthusiastic for life, and appreciative of his students’ gifts. It was wonderful; it is how I remember him best — that, and when he was in the classroom (could there even have been a fire going, some of those November and December early-darkened 5:25 classes?)
I was so sad to know he’d died – much to soon – but reading blogs like this one make me glad that in fact he hasn’t left us at all. That’s a marvelous legacy.
What a delight, to read this comment Beth. It captures Peter perfectly, your story, or stories. Thanks for reading mine, and holding part of his memory too.
How about now?
Regrettably, this is not the first time a male friend has been revealed to have done such a thing. I have often had to accommodate my feelings about men in my life to facts like these. I’m sure you recognize the complexity of the feelings of those of us who were his friends (and students, nearly contemporaneously with these events, in fact) and now learn of this after his death.