Wes Dick, History Department Recognizes Retiring Professor Geoffrey Cocks

Albion College’s current longest-tenured professor, Wesley Arden Dick, offered the following remarks about longtime History Department colleague Geoffrey Cocks at Cocks’ retirement reception in the Wendell Will Room of Stockwell Library. (Cocks offered reflections of his 41 years at Albion in the Spring-Summer 2016 issue of Io Triumphe! magazine.)

May 5, 2016 | Watch video of Wes's remarks and Geoff's remarks

Good afternoon! I dedicate my comments to Geoff and Sarah!

I have been invited to represent the History Department in celebrating Geoff’s career and retirement.

Where does one begin? I choose to begin when Geoff from California and Sarah from Portland met. They did not meet incidentally or accidentally. In fact, they met Occidentally, i.e., they met while undergraduates at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. They were married in Portland in 1971; Geoff completed his doctorate at UCLA and Sarah engaged in community work for VISTA.

In 1975, Albion College invited Geoff to teach modern European history and Sarah and Geoff migrated from the West Coast to the Midwest.

As Geoff began his first semester, Gerald Ford was president. Albion College was feeling the “Bern,” with Bernie Lomas president. The College had 1,800-plus students, and the Albion Public Schools enrolled 3,245 students. There were four supermarkets and main street was filled with Gambles, Western Auto, Henry’s, Young’s Apparel, Cartwright Shoes, Seelye’s Men’s Wear, and Penney’s. However, coincidentally, Corning Glass Works announced its closing, a harbinger of the deindustrialization of the next quarter-century. Frank Joranko’s Albion College football team was off to a good season and the Bohm Theatre was showing Shampoo with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.

On campus, a Pleiad article was headlined: “Student Quality Changing.”

Professor Julian Rammelkamp saw the change as one of decline: “Basically,” he noted, “students are not really as interested in subject matter, in learning per se as they are in grades.”

One thing they were interested in was beer. The brothers of ATO presented “An All Campus Blast” at the Conservation Club: two dollars for all you can drink. Buses leave from Baldwin Hall at 8:30. This invitation, combined with a Pleiad article on overcrowding at the taverns and night spots entitled “Been Bumping at the Bar?”, reminded me that this was the time when Michigan 18-year-olds could legally drink.

This was the setting as Geoff embarked on what would become a remarkable 41-year teaching journey at Albion College. How could I do justice to Geoff’s achievements? To list Geoff’s publications would take up all of our time. This guy is also a movie star. I did not want to just list his many honors. My answer was to reach out to friends, colleagues, and students to reflect on their Geoffrey Cocks. The response was amazing and I want to share some of those with you, beginning with faculty colleagues.

Jeff Carrier recalled his 1979 interview for an opening in Biology. He met with a group of biology majors who described their expectations for faculty. When Jeff pointed out these were indeed lofty goals, the students answered that Dr. Cocks in the History Department was the embodiment of all the traits they held dear. They unanimously agreed that Geoff “personified all they could hope for in a college professor.”

Jeff added: “My career spanned nearly 35 years at Albion College. … I watched Geoff engage students as Honors director, provide leadership in a stellar department … and challenge students to examine their own souls during studies of the profound history that was Nazi Germany, and awaken in them a sense of the best and worst of our world as he led them to understand the depravity of the Holocaust.”

On a lighter note, Jeff Carrier wanted to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to Geoff for “our basketball collision that netted him five stitches. I only ask that you remember that it was I who took you to the emergency room.”

Gene Cline’s memories are also rich and varied. Gene wrote: “When I directed Prentiss M. Brown, I would often get an earful from honors students about their honors seminars. … [however] they could never get enough of Geoff. … Geoff is one of the most naturally gifted teachers I have encountered. The impressions he makes on students are humanizing, sophisticated and enduring.”

Gene also knows all about Geoff’s legendary basketball career, which, I might add, included a three-on-three game in Kresge Gym yesterday.

Gene concluded: “I remember when Psychotherapy in the Third Reich came out and became well known. … Geoff commented that his ‘overnight success’ took 20 years of hard work. Geoff’s wry humor, self-deprecation, and honesty are wonderful.”

Paul Loukides has the following etched into his memory: “Geoff roaring into Film Images of World War II class on a child’s trike yelling ‘Speed, we must have speed,” and neatly finished his lecture on German military tactics for the quick and easy defeat of France. … If Geoff could find a way to make learning memorable, he did.”

For Chris Hagerman, Geoff “has been an inspiration not only for the fierce intellect he brought to bear in teaching and scholarship … but also for his love of the physical. My abiding memories of Geoff will be his energetic presence in the classroom, his laughter in the second floor of Rob, the gym bag over his shoulder as he headed for Kresge, and his infectious joy on the soccer pitch.”

Geoff’s former students were also eloquent in their tributes.

Zack Kleinsasser, ’00, traveled with Geoff, Frank Frick and students to Germany, Poland, and Israel in 1999. “I became a history major; I wrote my honors thesis on individuals who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust, which involved, at Dr. Cocks’ direction, traveling for a month in Europe and interviewing six ‘rescuers’ living in Denmark, France, and Belgium; and, I spent a large portion of my senior year working with Dr. Cocks to have a plaque erected on the Oskar Schindler factory that we had visited in 1999.”

Zack concludes: “Someone is retiring from Albion today who embodies everything laudable about liberal arts education: he is an academic, a lifelong learner, a mentor, a teacher, a friend, and a colleague who could motivate, inspire, and challenge students in every aspect of their lives, whether they expected it or not.”

Patrick Buck, ’15, currently a history graduate student at MSU, identified Geoff’s The Irrational in History as his favorite class at Albion. “It was not only stimulating, it made me think in totally new ways.”

Heather de Bari, ‘12, who enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Edinburgh, recalled what “made Geoff such a special professor is that he pushed his students to think critically. … He pushed his students to stretch their minds. ... I will always have a passion for [history] because he instilled that passion in me.”

Laura Willobee Johns, ’07, remembers Geoff as an amazing professor, who challenged you to be the best version of yourself. She adds, “There’s not a student who’s taken Film Images of World War II that doesn’t remember Geoff in his white tux on Casablanca day. As far as I’m concerned, he could give Humphrey Bogart a run for his money.”

And Laura feels particularly blessed for having had the opportunity to play soccer with Geoff and share three intramural championships while she was at Albion.

Liz Vogel sent a charming letter. Liz had mentioned to an Albion alumnus, Ted Everingham, ’61, that she was preparing a Geoff retirement commentary. Ted had studied history under Julian Rammelkamp and he sent Liz the following: “’Although Geoff arrived on campus well after I had left, my impression is that he has been in the Rammelkamp tradition…expecting much of his students and coaxing from them more than they knew that they had within them. I wish I had known Geoff, Liz, but in a way I think I did because I knew Julian Rammelkamp, and I think they had much in common.’” Ted concluded that he and Liz had been blessed because they had studied with giants.

For this occasion, I also reached out to friends. Allie and David Moore’s lives intersected with Geoff and Sarah on campus, at the law office, and at home. They first met when Geoff and Sarah arrived from California in August of 1975. Regarding their blended families, Allie and David wrote: “In the decades that have passed, we’ve raised children from birth to adulthood, lost all our parents and approached or reached retirement.” They mentioned admiring Geoff’s scholarly career, including his off-screen documentary film appearance, which is a helpful lead-in to sharing greetings from ABC News journalist Bill Blakemore.

Bill writes regarding Geoff: “We happened to meet by both being in the same documentary about Kubrick’s Shining—and our work together has, I suspect, only begun. … work in which I expect I will continue to tell folks who think some of my ideas are nuts that they should check out the books and articles of Geoffrey Cocks for a more solid, balanced and responsible take on it all.”

Geoff’s final class included guest Bill Blakemore and Bill, a climate-change expert, also gave my Environmental History class an update—scaring the hell out of me and the students with his vivid depiction of the enormity of climate change. It has been a pleasure to meet Geoff’s guests over the years. I was honored to meet his UCLA mentor, when Geoff invited him to Albion. It is also an honor to conclude my selection of letters with one from Peter Loewenberg, UCLA emeritus professor—hot off the press, literally dated May 5, 2016.

Peter writes: “So, Geoff is retiring!!! Hard to believe for a man so vital and creative! And I do not believe it—Geoff will continue to explore and shape modern European and German history with his nuanced focus on health, medicine, ideology, film, and institutions. … Geoff’s research on the social history of illness in Nazi Germany has decisively redefined our understanding of the social dynamics of Nazi Germany. Geoff takes us into the living Hell of experimentation on humans in Nazi science.”

In these times, we need history more than ever. History matters, and Geoff’s contributions have reminded us of history’s central place in the liberal arts.

Geoff and Sarah are headed for Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Bill Blakemore adds: “May you and your wonderful Sarah have a ball out west.” The West of Monterey Bay with its Lone Cypress, Monarch Butterflies, Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and Tor, the home of poet Robinson Jeffers, Big Sur and Point Lobos, and, if you want to walk on the wild side, Santa Cruz is nearby. Geoff, perhaps you can get Carmel’s Clint Eastwood to do for Donald Trump’s Republican convention what he did for Mitt Romney’s.

Geoff and Sarah, the excerpts from the generous letters highlight your rich legacy. You have touched our hearts and minds. Speaking for us all, Peter Loewenberg has the last word: “We love you Geoff, and wish you peace and serene creativity with dear Sarah at your side and Emily in your life, for decades to come!”

Thank you.

Watch video of Wes’s remarks and Geoff’s remarks