In Memoriam, Ronald Turner. 

 

Last night I had a dream about my friend Ron Turner.  A small group of us had gathered at his condo.  We might have been celebrating the publication of his new book, because he was opening a box and removing author copies the publisher had sent him.  He had a famous co-author, but I don't know who it might have been. 

 

Ron sounded just like himself, but I knew it was a dream, because Ron is dead. 

 

I had just arrived in Iceland on Friday, June 4th, and was walking around a bookstore in downtown Reykjavik with my wife and son after having breakfast, when I got a text from our friend Meredith Duncan, telling me Ron had passed away. 

 

He was a man of extraordinary accomplishment.  As the University of Houston Law Center's statement notes, the list included being the first black full professor in UHLC's history. He was also a loving son, a dedicated brother, and a devoted father.  Many of his students adored him.  All of his students admired him.  All of his colleagues respected him.

 

To me, though, what is most important about him is that he was one of my dearest friends. 

 

I believe I was his oldest friend in Houston, because I was one of four people who had dinner with him when he first came to town for a job interview.  UHLC was trying to recruit him away from Alabama.  I do not remember where we ate, but I remember we talked about books.  I had recently finished reading The Professor and the Madman, and discovered at that dinner Ron had read it too.  I believe we also shared our admiration for Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier's award-winning novel set during the Civil War.  But I'm not certain.  We might have had that conversation some other time.

 

He was a voracious reader.  But unlike me, he seemed to retain every word he read.  The last two books we talked about were The Zealot and the Emancipator, a book about Lincoln and John Brown, and Lincoln on the Verge, a book about Lincoln's train trip to Washington from Illinois, after he was first elected

 

When I say we talked about those books, I mean we texted about them. Ron lived alone.  His daughter lives in Chicago.  His sisters live out of town.  His mother died from covid (one of the many whose loved ones could not be with them at the end). 

 

When he died, I had not seen him in over a year. 

 

The last time I heard his voice was October of last year.  We talked about one of our colleagues who was going up for promotion. We both supported her, and Ron wanted to know what he could do to help. 

 

He was like that: always looking to help.  He read the manuscripts for each of my books, and had useful suggestions for e very one.  A day after I gave him a draft of Things I've Learned from Dying, he stuck his head in my office and said, I talk to dead people. 

 

He was quoting me.  I wrote that on page 159.  I talk there about a conversation I had with my colleague Gilbet Finnell, six years after Gil passed away. 

 

Right now, I feel like I'm talking to Ron. 

 

I cannot tell you precisely when he died.  His daughter had grown alarmed that he was not returning her texts or her calls.  She contacted police.  They arrived at his condo to find packages piled up at the door.  They went inside and found him. 

 

He had a terrible habit: He'd doggedly support everyone he cared about, but he mostly refused to ask for help for himself.  Only once in the nearly quarter century I knew him did he ask me for a favor.  Several years ago, a mutual friend of ours was battling an addiction.  Ron and I forcibly took him to a rehab facility.  After we left out friend there, we went back to a grocery store parking lot where our friend had left his car.  We drove up and down the aisles clicking the remote control's unlock button, searching for the car.  It seemed like an appropriate moment to raise the issue.  I said to Ron, You shouldn't think it's an imposition to ask for help when you need it.  You don't think it's an imposition to be here right now, do you?

 

He said, Yeah, you're right.   

 

We didn't talk only about books and TV.  We also talked about music (Ron and I both play piano, but unlike me, he played well).  We talked about politics and movies and poker. We'd gossip about colleagues.  We'd go out for drinks and discuss our plans to do a podcast, where we planned to free associate about whatever legal issues grabbed our attention.  Most of the time, they had to do with the First Amendment.  I told him we could hash out the episodes the following summer in the mountains. 

 

Ron, along with the Duncans (Meredith, Curtis, and their boys (now young men), Graham and Shaeffer) would come visit my wife (Katya) and our son (Lincoln) and me in the mountains, and we'd go for walks before dinner.  I told him I knew that he complained behind my back about my referring to these strolls as "short walks."  He laughed and said, Yeah, I told Meredith I disagree with your characterization. 

 

He and the Duncans and our friend David Jones and our former colleague (and now Dean at Oregon) Marcilynn Burke, and occasionally another guest, would gather every month or so at our house, and we'd eat pizza and drink and eat whatever Meredith made for dessert and play a friendly game of poker and, most of the time, make each other laugh.

 

Even before covid, we both binge-watched TV. He turned me on to The Killing, (which some people wrongly consider a knock-off of Twin Peaks). In one episode, a guy says to Holder, You know you're not black, right?

 

Or something like that. Ron loved that line. 

 

Last summer I sent him a list of shows to watch, including Casa de Papel and Fleabag.  Two days later he texted back.  It read:  "Fleabag. Wow."

 

In December he got sick.  He stopped responding to my texts and phone calls.  Meredith and I went around and around in January about how aggressive to be in reaching out to him.  His mom had already died from covid the preceding summer, and his sister had also fallen ill, and I was torn between wanting to be supportive, and not wanting to be intrusive.  But then in February a dear friend of my wife (named Belle) committed suicide, and that decided it for me.  I texted Ron and told him about Belle, and that the lesson I was drawing was to hound him.  I threatened to show up at his door and knock until he answered.  He wrote back right away. He gave me the details about his heart issues and hospital stay but assured me he was on the mend.  He reminded me to let Meredith know he was back at home and recovering, because, of course, he was Ron, which meant assuring his friends he was ok, even if he wasn't.

 

The last book we didn't talk about was Charles Blow's The Devil You Know, a book I found both very smart and very infuriating.  I texted him in early May. I wanted to know what Ron thought about it. He texted back that he had read about fifty pages and put it down. He was just too tired. The same text said he believed his doctors were finally getting a handle on his heart issues.  I told him I knew doctors he could consult for a second opinion.  He said thanks.    

 

When Meredith texted me the news my knees buckled.  From across the room my wife looked at me and said, What's wrong? 

 

Certain losses are nearly unbearably big. 

 

Ron was too private a person for me to feel comfortable saying much about the circumstances of his life.  So I'll leave it at this: He did not come from privilege.  His father was not his role model.  Through talent and grit, he made himself into a scholar, a teacher, and a role model.  He was as fair and decent a human being as our species has to offer.    

 

I wonder what became of those packages the police found piled at Ron's door.  I wonder who might have them.  I wonder what they held.  I can't say for sure, of course, but I'd bet almost anything they mostly held books.