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ROBIN WILLIAMS: HOPE AGAINST HOPE
By David G. Duggan
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
August 14, 2014
Robin Williams' self-inflicted death is a sobering reminder of how this country's institutions have failed to instill in its people a culture of life, of service, of sacrifice. For three years in the mid-1960s I knew Robin, perhaps not as well as some, but those three years were I suspect as formative as any. And this is where the institutions on which so much of our life is based failed.
In those three years, I had three points of intersection with Robin's life: as a school-boy chorister singing ancient chants at morning prayer, as a Boy Scout doing various service projects around town, and as a public school drama student. I learned that Robin played with small tin soldiers, reenacting famous battles, that he could sing on key, and that he had a gift for mimicking voices. Robin won our eighth grade poetry recitation contest by affecting a Cockney accent when performing Kipling's "Gunga Din."
Then our paths diverged and for nearly 50 years all I learned of him was gleaned from the press or displayed on screens big and small. The depression which led to his death was likely a fellow traveler with his fame but that alone cannot explain why he took the final step off the ledge of life.
Jesus, whom Robin and I lauded and adored in our Chicago suburban parish, came to many in the nick of time to heal their afflictions: the Centurion's daughter near death, the woman with an issue of blood for 12 years, the Gadarene demoniac who repeatedly scored himself. Though Robin had sought treatment for his illness and addiction, it obviously didn't answer the big-picture question of the value of his existence to a cynical and doubting world.
Robin now joins that pantheon of stars who like Icarus flew too close to the sun only to have the wax holding his wings together melt. While the world has lost a huge talent, the Church, the Scouts and the public schools have lost one who once graced their doors, yet turned his back on the lessons they were supposed to impart.
David Duggan is a retired attorney living in Chicago
