The Robe
The special guest blog post is written by Stephanie’s mother and mentor, Penny Washbourn, ThD, MBA. who has had a multifaceted career of academic teaching, administration, and even corporate training for four years. Her early career teaching and research was on women and religion, culminating in her book Becoming Woman: The Quest for Wholeness in Female Experience, which drew on her own experience. Since retiring, she has worked hard to shed her style of academic writing in her memoir on the spiritual challenges of aging, “The Robe” is part of the challenge of letting go.
On a warm fall day, I took the subway from Brooklyn carrying a garment bag I had brought from California back to its place of origin, Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The walk from the familiar subway stop at 116th Street was one I had done hundreds of times in my six years in Morningside Heights during my graduate studies from 1965 to 1971.
I had forgotten how hilly the area is. There are new buildings at Columbia University across the street and a huge 41-floor tower arising in the center of the Union quad, but much of the topography was familiar: ornate iron gates on my left as I passed Barnard College and the red brick Teachers College on the right of Broadway facing Union.
For a moment, I was disoriented when I tried to enter what had been the Union’s main entrance at 120th Street and Broadway. It has now been closed in favor of glass doors at 121st Street and an electronic security system. Now, nobody could come and go without proper identification.
Not a Typical Trip
My purpose there was planned. A pilgrimage of sorts. This was not just a trip down memory lane to revisit the place where I had begun my American odyssey. My late husband, Dan Cawthon, and I had been back to Union two decades earlier when they rented out guest rooms for alumni and visitors to NYC.
This trip was different. I was carrying my academic Doctor of Theology (ThD) robe to donate to the Seminary, as Dan did a few years before he died. He had mailed his. Recently, I looked at my robe hanging in the closet and asked myself, “What will happen to this robe when I die? Will it end up in a costume shop? Better to give it back to a graduate student who may not be able to afford the $1,000 price tag for a new one."
So, I had the robe cleaned and carried it across the country to where it all began — my academic life, my first marriage, my divorce, where I met Dan over half a century ago. That academic robe meant a lot to me as a testimony to what it took to earn an advanced degree in Theology, which was unusual in those days for women.
A Long Tradition
In the tradition of academic regalia drawn from the medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge, both the shape and colors have evolved from the clerical dress, which was black, since all undergraduate students were then preparing for Holy Orders. Some ancient universities may still retain the tradition of having undergraduates wear plain black robes over street clothes for everyday classes, as I had to do in the 1960s at my “red brick” Nottingham University.
The hoods for academic regalia (originally to keep the head warm) are trimmed differently; each discipline is signified by its color. The color for Theology is red. I still have my Bachelor’s degree hood with red trim from Nottingham for my degree in Theology.
This Union robe has scarlet balloon sleeves with three black velvet stripes on each sleeve, signifying a doctorate. The sleeves are cuffed at the wrist. The body of the gown is black, with two long velvet front panels. Mine has a series of buttons hidden under the front panel. (Current models fasten with a zipper.) The traditional academic hood is also red, and the cap is an eight-sided black velvet tam o’shanter with a gold tassel on top rather than the more familiar mortar board.
This academic regalia is striking because of the red. I always felt good wearing it. It elicited a lot of comments as it stood out even in the lines of academic robes from other institutions. Often, over the 30 years that Dan and I taught at the same academic institutions, we would walk in the procession together, wearing our matching robes, as his degree was also from Union. We were quite a striking couple!
My decision to travel across the country to hand over my robe in person was a good one. It gave me a chance to reflect on its 50-year history and its meaning in my life — to visit the familiar halls and chapel to say a last goodbye, and to spend a little time in gratitude for what those years gave me and how they shaped my life.
The Stories It Could Tell
The fact the robe has survived all these years is a miracle. What stories would it tell since I first wore it in Riverside Church in 1973 at my graduation ceremony? I figured out I had only worn it two or three times a year during my academic career — about 75 times over 34 years — yet it cleaned up nicely with only one small stain on the black velvet.
Would it remember the hours it sat in the blazing sun at the unshaded graduation ceremonies in the St. Mary's College of California football stadium, me sweating underneath, fanning myself with the program, listening to the interminable reading of names?
Would it remember the more auspicious event of sitting two seats away from Arnold Schwarzenegger, then Governor of California, when he gave the Commencement address? How the wind played with the wide sleeves when I read all the graduates' names and later was congratulated by the Governor for reading them so well!?
Would it remember being taken in a garment bag for a trip to Stanford University in the mid-1990s when our daughter earned her Master’s degree? Or the pictures we took with her, all of us robed, to celebrate her graduation?
Most importantly, would it remember when the fire was bearing down on our house in Oakland in 1991? While I was looking for heirlooms to throw into our suitcase, it was Dan who went into the closet and swept up some of my clothes, my wedding dress, and our academic robes. I had forgotten all about them in our rush to evacuate.
A Tour of the Present (and the Past)
Giving this robe back to Union marked a conclusion to a long, important chapter of my life, my personal journey, and the teachers, ideas, and values that shaped me.
Union's President was most happy to receive it. She offered me a tour of the old buildings and explained the changes that had taken place in the ensuing decades.
The ground floor ” Pit” was still there as I remembered it, along with the small coffee shop where Dan and I had many conversations during our courting days. I peered into the underground tunnel with the heating pipes that ran between the main building and my residence hall across the street, where we could walk in the winter without going outside.
I wandered into the organ practice rooms where Don Chen, my first husband, would practice for hours. I would watch, mesmerized by the skills required to play the organ with all four hands and feet flying on the two keyboards and foot pedals.
My guide took me into James Chapel where, I told her, I was married in 1968. With all the chairs removed for some event, it seemed much larger than I remembered, but the massive organ case was still front and center. A fellow organ student, a friend of Don’s, had played Vidor’s Toccata and Fugue as our wedding march.
With Profound Gratitude
Walking around those halls, I thought of the teachers I had during that era when Union was a flourishing graduate school with a School of Sacred Music and some of the world's leading theologians on the faculty.
A gentle Scot, John McQuarrie, with his thick Scottish accent, was one of them. I was quite fond of him. I visited him in later years after he had returned to Oxford to take up a distinguished professorship. I was also fortunate to take a course with the renowned Jewish scholar and mystic, Abraham Heschel, when he was a visiting professor from Jewish Theological Seminary across the street.
Professor Daniel Day Williams, a most kind man, taught Philosophy of Religion and introduced me to the thoughts of Alfred North Whitehead and other Process philosophers and theologians. He became my dissertation adviser. He was also tireless in service to Union, facilitating dialogues during those turbulent days of student strikes and protests against the Vietnam War.
Williams was the most important influence on broadening my intellectual and spiritual journey during those years. Unfortunately, he died very soon after I finished my degree, but I have his book The Spirit and Forms of Love, which Dan gave me after we had lost all our books in the Oakland fire. Dan found a used copy on Amazon and ordered it for me as a birthday present. I was most happy to receive it. Some books have a special place in my life.
As I walked about Union, I felt profound gratitude for my mentors and those years. Though not untroubled personally, they laid the foundation for much of my life and career. When people asked how I came to the US, I would say "I came for a year on the 'English Scholarship' and stayed for a lifetime."
With my robe home in its place of origin, I feel I have closed this chapter of unfinished business. I need not visit again.
