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Jaspers fan a genuine loss at RCC
(Original publication: April 29, 2007)
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Every now and then, someone walking past my home will stop to offer either a compliment, gripe or idea for a column.
About four years ago, a new neighbor – a fellow about my age who always wore a Manhattan College baseball cap with the school nickname, Jaspers, across the front – started doing so regularly.
He knew my name and recognized me as a fellow Manhattan College alumnus. Although I didn’t recognize him when he introduced himself, I knew the name instantly.
Bill Weisgerber and I weren’t friends in college, but we had crossed paths and now, more than 30 years later, we were neighbors. We talked about my work and his, both as a securities and insurance broker and financial planner and as a teacher on the adjunct faculty at Rockland Community College.
But mostly, we talked about Manhattan’s basketball team. We both followed the team, but he knew that in recent years I had been crazy about the West Virginia Mountaineers since my daughter started school there.
Bill took that to mean he had to keep me up to date on Manhattan recruiting, new additions to their schedule and the search for a coach to replace Bobby Gonzalez, who was hired away by Seton Hall.
He was pleased with the Jaspers’ 10-8 record in the MAAC Conference this past season under new coach Barry Rohrssen.
I had hoped to go to their first game in the conference tournament in Bridgeport on March 3, and to ask Bill if he wanted to tag along. But when they drew an afternoon game, I had to skip it.
A few days after they lost that game to Siena, Bill and I met on our street.
We did a quick season review, and I asked if he had gotten to any games. He had made it to one early on, he said, but couldn’t drive that far anymore.
“Let’s make a point of getting to two or three next season,” I said.
“I’d like that if it’s possible,” Bill said, “but I’m terminal. I have pancreatic cancer.”
I told him I was sorry, and he told me about going with his father, also a Manhattan grad, who was visiting from Michigan, to purchase a grave at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Haverstraw. He joked that he now owned property, but didn’t have to worry about taxes.
That was Bill, laughing in the face of a killer illness.
Folks at RCC who knew Bill during more than 20 years teaching there talk about his dignity facing death, his devotion to his economics students – who called him The Professor – and his passion for the Jaspers.
Jim Thelen, who has taught math at the college for 33 years, saw Bill there every Saturday. They always talked sports and basketball, Thelen says. More than a decade ago, they had gone to a game together and Thelen saw a transformation. “This man, who was reserved and measured in his speech and everything he did, was up there with the students, basically making a fool out of himself and proud of it.”
“This gentle soul,” Thelen says of Bill, “is part of my heritage at RCC and in Rockland County.” Among students and faculty, he says, “he was very much beloved. A little quirky, but that’s not bad.”
Gene Homicki, who graduated from St. John’s University, started teaching math at RCC in 1980, five years before Weisgerber.
“Bill and I had a standing comedy routine,” Homicki says. “I would ask him why Manhattan College was called Manhattan College, since it was located in Riverdale (the Bronx). He would give me the history of Manhattan College. ‘It was founded in Manhattan,’ he’d say. ‘Well, when they moved to Riverdale, it should have been renamed Riverdale College.’ My logic would drive him nuts, and make him laugh.” Despite the rivalry between Manhattan and St. John’s, Homicki says, he always looked forward to Bill’s visits.
“Bill enjoyed living,” he says. “Being in the classroom and being at RCC were very important to him. Teaching is a wonderful profession, and Bill was a wonderful teacher. We will miss him, but we know that he is in heaven.”
Martin Lecker, who was chairman of the business department from 1991 to 1995 and from 2002 to 2006, says Bill would always volunteer when the department needed someone in an emergency.
Lecker thinks that was part of a kindness Bill always displayed. “Bill was very student-oriented and a very kind soul. He would do anything to help out the students or RCC,” Lecker says.
One of those students, Joshua Roberts of Suffern, says, “Professor Weisgerber was probably the nicest person I’ve had as a teacher. He’s made a big impact on me.”
Roberts was in an economics course Weisgerber taught during the short, intense winter break. The way he approached it, Roberts says, it was about much more than economics.
“It was a class about life. He used the class as therapy for himself,” Robert says, adding, “It helped me look at my own life and my problems and realize how minuscule they are.”
During that term, Bill knew how serious his illness was and told students he hoped to finish the spring term. “He always said he would teach until he could teach no more,” Roberts says.
That day came March 26, about three weeks after my last conversation with Bill.
The following Thursday, Bill left for Rosary Hill, a skilled nursing facility in Westchester run by the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.
Two days later, Gene Homicki and his wife visited Bill. “When we got there, he was reading the paper, and when we left the painkillers were getting to him,” Homicki says. “In almost two hours, he complained only once about the pain.”
On April 12, RCC President Cliff Wood and Roberts, the student trustee on the RCC board, visited Rosary Hill to present Bill a plaque in honor of his long service to the college and his devotion to its students.
Bill died two days later. At his wake, a Manhattan College blanket was draped over his casket. Close by was Bill’s Jaspers baseball cap – the one he’ll always wear in the memories of all who knew him.
Reach Bob Baird at rbaird AT lohud DOT com or 845-578-2463. His column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
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[JR: I was touched by this story. In so many ways, on so many levels,for so many reasons. Never let an opportunity go by without seriously considering that you may not get a second chance. Sadly.]
