S P O T L I G H T
He was, quite literally, the salvation to many kids who found adolescence troubling and painful. He was the great school master in the old sense of the word. We forget that simply being there is important, and Eric has always been there for kids. Taft almost shockingly different. “It was exotic,” he recalls. “The drug scene pervaded much of the school. I had come from a strait-laced boarding school in England, and then Montana, where none of this was going on. This, though, was the hangover from the early ’70s, the collapse of Vietnam, and so on. The general behavior was troubling. There was a lot going on, and there were some real individuals who stuck out. Yes, things
8
Spring 1996
have changed bit by bit. Compared to then, the students today can seem almost drab. But the ones I am working with now are the nicest I’ve ever had.” But Taft was the right place for him, at least for a couple of decades, and the dorm was to become his defining place. He was out of the college world, and it was this shift in priorities, from mastery of subject to concern for the whole student, that shaped Eric’s career here.
At Taft, he recalls, “The entire emphasis is on the student. And that is where my greatest satisfaction lies.” Eric set up shop on HDT3 and has never moved. I am not sure anything has changed in his apartment; the things most of us tend to think about—it’s time for a new couch, this stereo is no good anymore— don’t interest Eric. He has as few needs as anyone I have ever known. What he wants is simply to be able to work with