In 2015 I wrote a letter to the Fargo Forum eulogizing one of my favorite professors who had just passed away. So many Cater lovers have praised that letter over the years that it truly reinforced my feeling that she was truly a super-special God-sent human being. Just yesterday, paging through some papers, I came upon a copy of that letter and decided that it was really too inspired to just let sit. It brought tears to my eyes to read it, so I think it’s well worth putting it out just once more.
Greetings: Not long ago the Forum made note of the passing of Catherine Cater, age 98. At her request, very few details appeared in her obituary, but I feel some should be added in appreciation of this once brilliant star in a constellation of superb instructors then teaching in the 60’s in the English and Humanities Department at MS.
I was blessed at the time to take classes from four truly charismatic professors: Dr. Joseph Satin, Shakespeare; Dr. Clarence, “Soc” Glasrud, English Novels, Dr. Roland Dille, Modern British novels, and Rufus Bellamy, brilliant in everything but especially Mythology, Greek, and Seventeenth Century Lit. including The King James Bible.
Still, one star, not technically part of the English Dept., shines out first magnitude — my philosophy teacher, Dr. Catherine Cater. It was she who did most in those early pre-graduate years to teach us how to think.
Time after time her searching questions and perplexing paradoxes, presented in the best Socratic manner, sent me scurrying to the stacks to find proofs of assumptions I had taken for granted. Her class should have been called the challenge of ideas, and she presented those challenges with an eloquence and kindness that prompted even some of the shyest students to venture opinions without fear of being scorned or laughed at.
She made Socrates and Plato come alive, and kids sat in the student union talking philosophy instead of rock and roll.
Some of the greatest lies her example exposed were the cruel and twisted stereotypes floating about in the general conversation about black people —about whom most of the students up here in the lily-white frozen north were pretty much clueless. It took Jackie Robinson’s courage, Floyd Paterson’s articulateness, Martin Luther King’s eloquent martyrdom, and Catherine Cater’s gracious, pure, and elegant brilliance to consign that pack of lies back to the pit it came from, at least for me.
And so sweet Catherine, always so modest and self-effacing; always so gracious and kind, I hope one of your close friends someday writes the story of your exemplary life. The world deserves, nay needs to know that great ones such as yourself, who endured it all at a time when being black made one a target for derision, mockery, and even bullets, could still emerge victorious.
The poet Steven Spender, I believe, describes you best in his poem, “I Think Continually of Those Who Are Truly Great”:
“Born of the sun, you traveled a short while toward the sun, And left the vivid air signed with your honour.
“Farewell dearest Cathy, hope I can see you in class once again, ‘One Fine Day’ up Home.”
I made a few corrections in the letter above, and I know a great deal has been printed about the great Dr. Cater both in The Forum and in publications of NDSU.
It is ironic that Dr. Cater didn’t spend her teaching career at Moorhead State, but I gather some crazy technicality disqualified her from meeting certain requirements. So she and her best friend, Dr. Holmquist, moved across the river. What a loss for MS! What a gain for NDSU.