Charlie's Prep Excerpt

I recently had the privilege of editing a book about my old high school (Brooklyn Prep, '63) and its iconic teacher, Charlie Winans.  The book, brought into being by the enthusiasm of NYU President John Sexton, tells the story of a unique school, one that closed almost 40 years ago, but that still has a loyal though aging alumni body that has raised millions of dollars for current Jesuit schools.  Here is a short excerpt.  The book is not for sale, but can be obtained by making a contribution to the Alumni Scholarship Fund.  E-mail me for further information.  To hear more about Charlie, follow this link to an interview with John Sexton: http://www.thirteen.org/openmind/education/charlie-and-doc-goodbye-mr-chips/1990/

Charlie's Prep, pp. 1-2:

Begin with the nots.

Charlie Winans was not a priest or monk, though later in life he became a Third Order (secular) Franciscan.

He was never married, and had no children.

He was not, in actual fact, a man of titanic intellect, though at any given moment, he could be as pithy or as witty as Gore Vidal. 

He never had much money, yet that did not stop him from becoming one of the great, and most generous high-livers of his time and place. 

He was not a psychologist – and at the end of the day, he often saw himself through a dramatic haze – as Falstaff, or Jean Brodie, or in his latter days as Don Quixote

Yet Charlie could, and regularly did, see into the souls of his friends and students with a clarity, a cogency, and a charity that transformed their lives.

                                                                *

            What Charlie was, was someone who knew how to live, and could teach it – not just to the students of Brooklyn Prep in Crown Heights, where he taught most of his career, but to anyone who cared to listen.

He didn’t just do it through his chosen field of literature, but also through music, art, and history; via lessons, dinners, outings, and maritime voyages; in casual conversation and in formal lectures. 

He did it by directing stage productions  -- comedy and tragedy, modern and ancient plays. 

He did it at his home at 212 Lincoln Road and in classrooms at Brooklyn Prep, but also at museums and concert halls, in botanical gardens and zoos, and around a broad range of historical sites. 

He did it in social work and in social protest; in attendance at panoply of religious services, Catholic and non-Catholic.  

            And where he went, he trailed insights, as he trailed students.  Bedraggled the latter might be, but they were also – always – bewitched and beguiled.  He was not the only popular or great teacher, lay or religious, at Brooklyn Prep – far from it – but Charlie was in a class by himself.  He was a peerless man whose natural style and largeness of spirit could not have been acquired, but only bestowed by God – the Christian One the students knew (or thought they did), or perhaps an ancient god, some Greek daimon whom Charlie had told them about.

“Sing Muse,” Charlie would proclaim, as if he were Virgil or Milton, and his students would listen – to the song, at times, but always to the singer.  For he was the thing itself; the lesson and the man were one.  He embraced the best of the Jesuit tradition – with its emphasis on character and faith, on clear-eyed reason, on self-mastery through self-knowledge (and vice versa) – yet he was a great-souled man, whose life force could never have been contained by any institution, even an exceptional and ancient one like the Society of Jesus.  Charlie’s vast humanity, his sheer exuberance for life, and his coruscating irony up-ended the Society’s traditions, sorely trying Jesuit patience in the bargain.