Jeremy Mickel stood in Weaver Chapel on Dec. 7, describing the moment his mother realized at some deeper level that her husband was an exceptional teacher.
“Stan” was teaching Jeremy to ride a bike. “He didn’t get frustrated. He kept showing me, giving specific feedback and pointing out what I was doing wrong and how I could do it better,” Jeremy said.
The eldest of three Mickel sons likened the process to 'telling students where to put their tongues to get the right tone in Chinese.”
But as Jeremy’s youngest brother, Patrick, pointed out, when their father graduated from high school near Springfield in 1957, it seemed unlikely that he would teach anywhere, much else at Wittenberg ... much, much less for 36 years.
Finishing in the bottom third of his class, the future Dr. Mickel did leave high school with a love of language instilled by Latin teacher Gwen Runyan. Paired with a facility for foreign languages, that landed him a place at the U.S. Army Language School at the Presidio in Monterey, Calif., where he studied Mandarin.
After an honorable discharge, Mickel put himself through the structural linguistics program at the University of California at Berkeley, working in restaurants to keep himself fed and watching the demonstrations held by the campus’ radical Free Speech movement, whose marches were quite different from the army’s.
The yin and yang of Mickel’s life then took a rebound as robust as any he’d generate in years on the racquetball court when he used the degree he earned at Berkeley to get a job at the Central Intelligence Agency. Mickel summed up his brief stint at the CIA succinctly: “I decided, this is not for me.”
So in October 1966, the 25-year-old spent his last $150 in Portland, Ore., for passage on a slow boat to what then was called “Nationalist China,” or Taiwan, for a university job. His unusual mode of travel led to a chance meeting with a man by the unlikely name of “Orient Lee.” Lee, who may have been on the wheat boat because of a fear of flying, invited his fellow passenger to take a position at a different university. Two years later, Mickel returned to Springfield with a master’s degree from the College of Chinese Culture, and the Spring field News-Sun wrote a story about a hometown boy headed for a doctoral program in Chinese Literature and Language at Indiana University.
When Wittenberg Provost Allen O. Pfnister an Professor Eugene Swanger, who specialized in East Asian religions, read the story, Mickel’s unlikely journey began to come full circle. Granted an extra year to complete his doctoral research, the man who one might not have gained admission to Wittenberg as a student was on the path to a professorship.
Mickel joined the faculty in 1971. By the time he earned his Ph.D. in 1976, he had married Karen Adams ’73 and set his sights on raising a family and building the East Asian Studies department.
Among his major professional contributions was Reading Chinese Newspapers: Tactics and Skills, released by Far Eastern Publications at Yale in 1996. The Modern Language Journal called it “a major breakthrough in Chinese language materials,” and the Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association said it set “a new standard” for using newspapers as a practical teaching tool.
Matevia Endowed University Pastor Rachel Tune said Mickel’s sensitivity to students’ overall learning needs also is written into the nooks and crannies of Hollenbeck Hall: “Stan chaired the building committee, and for many, his presence can be felt in every inch of that space.”
In like manner, Mickel helped to build ASIANetwork, a consortium of liberal arts colleges promoting Asian studies. When it presented him with a 2009 Distinguished Service Award, the organization said Mickel was part of a time in which “so much was accomplished in so little time by so few individuals – all asking for so little in return.”
In a letter read at Mickel’s memorial service, Professor Emeritus Jim Huffman said that although Mickel was as “frenetically busy” as any builder, “he exuded the contemplative spirit.”
“When I looked at [Chinese] oracle bones, I saw political records and artifacts,” Huffman wrote. “When he looked at them, he saw courtiers singing, he saw the ancients’ hearts.”
Mickel saw the hearts of those around him, too.
“He was even more ‘there for’ and part of his family than he was at work,” son Patrick said. At birthdays, “instead of balloon-wielding clowns, we had Professor Mickel painting the Chinese interpretations of our Western names on T-shirts to keep as party favors.”
And when Jeremy and middle son Andy took an interest Cub Scouts, their father first signed on as den leader, then as pack leader for Springfield’s entire north side.
All this notwithstanding, colleague Jennifer Oldstone- Moore suggested that “the perhaps most poignant of this great gift of giving ... was Stan’s nurturing of his blessed partnership with Karen,” whom he married in a double-ring ceremony in Weaver Chapel on July 13, 1974.
When Mrs. Mickel asked him why he constantly was willing to do what she wished to do, “he told her it was because his purpose in life was to make her happy,” Oldstone- Moore said. “At the dinner table, he always had a small bottle of soap bubbles handy so that if Karen was having a bad day, he could blow the bubbles to cheer her up.”
Diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia during his first year of retirement, Mickel began studying the language and behavior of another life form, birds. Eventually, his illness necessitated a move to Springfield’s Forest Glen Health Campus, where he spent his final years.
Jeremy Mickel said his 73-year-old father’s passing on Nov. 28 has, in an unexpected way, brought his spirit bubbling back.
“As a friend told me, now that he’s gone, it’s like he’s all around us. He’s free of the disease. He’s free of this one single place that he lived. And we can take him with us wherever we go.”
They are words that could open the sequel to “The Rather Unlikely Travels of Dr. Stanley L. Mickel II.”