Chapter 8 - John Saxon's Story read by Jenny Hatch
a funeral, God, and religion
Chapter 8: a funeral, God, and religion
‘Few times in our lives do we get the opportunity to meet and interact
with someone who demonstrably changes things on even a state,
let alone a national level. John Saxon was such an individual.”
Wayne Bishop, professor of mathematics,
University of California-North Ridge, 1996
John had lived with two quadruple by-pass heart surgeries, the first being in 1978 and a second one in 1988. Now, in 1996, after making a remarkable recovery over a nine-week period in the Norman Regional Hospital, John Harold Saxon died from complications of congestive heart failure on October 17. His condition had suddenly worsened and in a matter of days, he was gone.
Until those last breaths, he was working on one of his books to be published. Even in that first 1987 home video, John had told his children, “I’m having a wonderful time thinking of all the good things that happened to me. I’m blessed to have my books now. They are important because they’ll make a difference for children. I thought anyone could write a math book but I’ve learned that’s not true. I hope I live long enough to finish the calculus book (which was published in 1988).” He urged his employees while recording that video tape to modify the books from time to time to keep current copyrights and to change some word problems and do any necessary cosmetic changes. As though in an afterthought, he added that few changes were really needed. Then he said, “I’m happy I have something to do to occupy my mind instead of waiting to die. Even if I died today, I would be happy I made the trip.”
His funeral was pure John Saxon.1 No flowers. No “playing the game” with individuals’ feelings. Memorial donations were encouraged for the University of Oklahoma John Saxon Foundation Professorship in Ancient History, a chair he had funded with $250,000 in 1993. A simple rectangular table was draped with an American flag in place of a casket. He had been cremated and those ashes were later spread at the Athens, Georgia, country club. Held in the First Presbyterian Church in Norman, the service included the singing of Amazing Grace, the reading of Psalm 103, and the quotation from the third chapter, second verse of Ecclesiastes. An overview of his accomplishments was given of his military life and as an educator and publisher.
Speakers included Frank Wang, “the 16-year-old Chinese boy” who was his first employee and who ultimately became chief executive officer of John’s company. He told how John had taught him to drive a car and grill juicy steaks and how never to give up when faced with adversity, but, most importantly, that it was paramount to give time to the family. And, Frank said, “John told me he did not want tears shed when he died nor sullen countenances but a celebration for a life full of adventures.” So, it was that after the funeral all were invited to a reception at the Saxon Publisher headquarters for champagne, food, and story-telling about John.
Brig. Gen. Willum Harry Spillers spoke at the funeral about seeing John for the first time in 1944, sitting on the stoop at Amherst College as a brand new second lieutenant waiting for admission to West Point, hat on the back of his head, new silver wings on his chest, and an impudent grin on his face. He said he did not become friends with John that freshman year at West Point, but “I can remember him over many others in my class.” He confirmed that John didn’t take his studies very seriously, but that he was the one who would later take failing cadet pilots as a flight instructor and wouldn’t give up on them.
“He had an ability to understand those who were a little bit slower,” he said. The two of them flew B-26s in Korea and shared housing while there. He would wake up to see John swinging his golf club, saying, “I got it! I got it!” Then, later, John would say, “I lost it.” They would take “R&R”—rest and recreation—in Tokyo, flipping to see who flew the airplane to and from Japan. One time, Gen. Spillers looked at John, who was supposed to be flying the plane, and he was reading a magazine. The general agreed that John was always a character of his own making. He said he talked with John about every two months throughout the years. Then, he said to John’s children, “All four of you are compliments to your father.”
The church was between ministers said his daughter Selby, so the pastor participating in the service had counted on them to tell him about John. He learned, for example, how dedicated John was to his family. “He went home every night at 5 p.m., especially while he was teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the children were younger, to find them waiting for him on the front steps,” said the minister. He said John told them that others may have toys but they were building memories and that the things they were learning couldn’t be taken away from them. “No one will make you as happy as you can make yourself,” quoted the minister. “It’s your life. You decide. A good decision will be a victory; a bad one and you will suffer the consequences.” Bringing some laughter from those in the church, the minister said the “alpha” and “omega” of John’s life were “when Johnny finished medical school” and when “Selby got pregnant.”
John was tenacious, purposeful, focused, but “couldn’t remember your name,” he said. The minister reported that John was known for mincing no words, which caused more gentle laughter, and that John believed public opinion was not a measure of self-esteem. “When he got hit, John knew how to recover quickly and get on with the task.” The final laughs came when the minister said the first question John would ask as an avid golfer when he reached the Pearly Gates would be, “How do you swing this golf club correctly?”
In closing, the cleric said, “We celebrate one who was willing to dare to color outside the lines,” while also giving Mimmy and West Point credit for making John who he was—“a patriot who loved and fought for his country and who really did believe in the West Point motto of duty, honor, country.”
A solo of the Lord’s Prayer was sung, followed by a recording of the West Point alma mater. Military personnel came to the flag-draped table, folded the flag while taps were played, and then presented it to the family.
While John believed in God, he wasn’t too sure about organized religion. He spoke about having been raised in a southern “hell-fire and damnation” environment that always made him feel bad about himself. It wasn’t until he went to West Point that he realized he was just like everyone else—just as “good and capable,” said Selby. As time went by and he survived airplane crash after airplane crash, he began to wonder if there were indeed a reason he was being spared. On one of the home video tapes, John said, “I was not destined to be a pilot, but I’ve been given chance after chance” to fly airplanes.2 He referred to one of his early employees, Stephen Hake, who wrote the middle school textbook series for Saxon Publishers and who is a born-again Christian. “He believes God doesn’t have any more to do than mess around in our daily lives,” smiled John. “If this is true, God was sitting up there and saying, ‘I want John to write these books, so I didn’t let him get killed in all of those crashes.’”
In letters sent to the family after John’s death, one was from Robert (Bob) Sweet, Jr., co-founder of the National Right to Read Foundation. He said he had spoken to John in March of that year and John had welled up with tears, saying, “Bob, God called me to this work. I have to complete this mission.” Bob concluded, “He completed the work God gave him to do and I believe he has ‘graduated’ with honors.”3
This increasingly admitted belief of God’s role in his life seems to reflect that John finally understood how to approach the whole “God issue,” if not how to accept religion, which he believed harbored hypocrites. Selby had said she thought her dad just didn’t know how to approach this relationship because he had not been involved deeply in a church that taught the grace and mercy of God, which she believed could have helped balance the religious damnation he had perceived as a child.
Regardless of those misgivings, John had a well-defined belief system of what makes a person “who you are.” He said, according to Selby, it is that belief that motivates a person to get out of bed everyday. “It orients your goals. That’s a fundamental in life.” She said it was this value that prompted her father to figure out a way to make his students at Oscar Rose Junior College successful in mathematics. When he took young pilots who were failing in their flight training at Vance Air Force Base, and other instructors wanted to wash them out of the program, she said, “He wanted them to have a chance to make it—as he did at West Point.”
The importance of God’s work being manifested in John’s second and third professional careers of teaching and publishing has proven to be generational as Sarah, Bruce and their spouses established a private Christian school in 2000 in Tulsa called the Regent Preparatory School of Oklahoma. John’s desire to open a private school himself, said Selby, staffed with “bright-eyed teachers” with intellectual clarity, a quality he so admired, was thus fulfilled by his children and is proof, she said, of God’s promise: “He will make a covenant with you and keep it unto the generations.”4
Countless letters arrived from political leaders, educators, teachers, parents, and students at Saxon Publishers upon John’s death. Other letters were written by his employees to express feelings about having worked with John. Editorials, some of which had been highly critical of him in his early years, now extolled his life and service to the education community. Among his supporters was State Senator Don Rubottom, R-Tulsa, who said, “There are 100,000 kids in this generation who are mathematically competent because of John Saxon.”
The Daily Oklahoman newspaper wrote, “In an era where ‘two plus two equals four—unless you have a problem with that’ is less a joke than a description of widely-held attitudes, John Saxon was a courageous and forthright champion for excellence.”5
Marita Carroll, a Texas principal, said a picture of John in his U.S. Air Force uniform would hang on their wall of fame with other great teachers who have devoted their lives to education. She said, “I only wish John had lived to see Texas place his books on the State Adopted List. It is going to happen.”6
Associate Dean John Hansen at Oscar Rose State College was John’s office mate when he taught at the school. He said, “John was uninhibited about what he did or how he acted in his efforts to gain the students’ attention. One time he purchased a plastic hat with a battery-powered rotating red light on top and made a siren sound. He wore it as he had students working problems on the board. When he spotted an error, he would turn on the light and siren to get their attention. Then he would explain or ask the student to explain the error.”7
Long-time-opponent to reform math methods that were the antipathy of John’s program, Dr. Wayne Bishop, a mathematics professor at California State University-Los Angeles, wrote that John’s family could take great solace in the fact that he was able to get beyond giving voice to those crying in the wilderness. He was able to live long enough to feel the wind change and he was part of the reason that it did. “Few times in our lives do we get the opportunity to meet and interact with someone who demonstrably changes things on even a state, let alone a national level. John Saxon was such an individual…His snowball has started to roll.”8
The Atlanta (GA) Journal wrote succinctly in an editorial, “John Saxon wrote math textbooks that irritated the education establishment…His main selling point: His books worked.”
William Buckley, Jr., wrote directly to Selby: “I am saddened by the news you brought, but grateful to you for taking the trouble to advise me of the death of your valiant, indeed unique father. He was born to fight, and I suppose the only surprise is that he proved mortal. I was happy to have a small part in the development of his idea, which I know was a boon to the republic.”9
The most poignant and personal commentary about John Saxon as an employer was shared by Shannon Floyd, an assistant to Greg True, vice-president of marketing for Saxon Publishers. Her message, sent via e-mail across the address book of Saxon “people” was used in the “Preface” of this book because it so clearly set the reality over the media image of John Saxon for those who worked closely with him. Ms. Floyd died an early death in February, 2009, at the age of 39 from breast cancer.