Teaching from the Heart and Soul: The Robert F. Panara Story

Defining Moments

188 Defining Moments Throughout the 1980s, Bob’s honors piled up. In 1985 MacMurray College in Illinois presented him with an honorary doctorate of public service at its commencement exercises. In 1986 William Castle was especially pleased to have the opportunity to announce at the banquet for an NTID/Gallaudet College English Teachers Conference that Bob would receive the honorary doctorate at Gallaudet College’s commencement that May. Castle had worked for several years with Gallaudet College to encourage officials to give thought to honoring Bob in that manner. The ceremony at Gallaudet College was a special thrill for Bob. Nothing thrilled Bob more, however, than to see his former students excel. Bernard Bragg had become the “Prince of Players on the Silent Stage.” Allen Sussman, another of Bob’s stars on the Fanwood stage, excelled in both psychology and writing . He had carried his talents to Gallaudet, acting in plays and taking leading roles in student life and government, and later earned a Ph.D. Suleiman Bushnaq, whom Bob had tutored after school privately at Fanwood, also attended Gallaudet and then earned a Ph.D., as did Eugene Bergman, who became a Gallaudet English professor and distinguished writer. Seymour Bernstein became an outstanding teacher at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside. Peter Shuart and Joseph Cohen did well in federal government work; Albert Berke worked with the Commission on Deafness in Connecticut and served as vice president of the National Association of the Deaf. These were sweet memories for Bob, who recalled how difficult it had been for a deaf person to earn a doctorate a few decades earlier. Among his NTID students, Janice Cole and Betti Bonni entered the National Theatre of the Deaf as performers, as did Paul Johnston and Mike Lamitola. The latter two also became theater instructors and directors. After his NTD experience Willy Conley went on to write and teach theater at Gallaudet. Ricky Smith became a professional mime. Chuck Jones toured for years Defining Moments 189 In 1986, Bob received an honorary doctoral degree from his alma mater, Gallaudet College. 190 Teaching from the Heart and Soul as the “Human Cartoon.” The deaf artist and actor Chuck Baird recalled that his theater experience at NTID “created a sense of crystallization among the student performers . . . that pulled me into the theater world. Being able to travel and communicate about the world around us was wonderful.”1 Baird had begun his involvement in theater when Bob asked him to perform a “silly skit.” After that, he took on the challenges of reciting poetry in American Sign Language, acting in plays, and, eventually, became an award-winning artist. Many of Bob’s former students kept in touch with him as the years passed. Jan Afzelius, who studied under Bob in 1959 and became an active artist for one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, wrote to Bob: “I can never forget you as a wonderful teacher [in poetry] during my study. A more instinctively easy-going scholar had I never enjoyed despite my low marks.”2 Gerald DeCoursey, a Gallaudet graduate (in 1958) who also took a graduate course Bob taught in 1982 at the University of Rochester, paraphrased Winston Churchill in describing Bob, “Never before have so many found so much good in one person.”3 As Bob approached the age of sixty-five, his joy in teaching never abated, but he began to tire. Bob had looked forward to a life without deadlines, schedules, homework, and committee meetings. As he wrote a few years earlier to his friend and fellow poet Rex Lowman, “So many worlds, so much to do / So little time, so little done. There, in a nutshell (or “two-liner”) Tennyson expressed the timeless and universal hang up of all people like us—who bite off more than we can chew.”4 After Bob’s father passed away at the venerable age of ninety-seven at his home in Boynton Beach, in 1986, his mother moved in with his sister, Eleanor, and her family in Atlanta. She died the Defining Moments 191 following year. Along with all the normal feelings of grief and loss, the death of his father and mother made Bob all the more aware of the decades marching on. Bob retired from NTID in June of 1987. It was time to repay Shirley with closer companionship for all those times he had been absent because...