The Most Christ-Like Person I Ever Met
While serving in the USAF, I met many people from many different parts of the United States. They ran the gamut of personality types. One person from that group stands out in my memory, though, for his unique personality and behavior. I won't post his name, for privacy reasons.
I met this person while attending a 9-month total immersion Russian Language school at Syracuse Unversity, where I was sent by the Air Force for reasons only they understand. 24 hours a day, while on-campus in an area set aside for the language school, we were required to speak only Russian, and attended classes eight hours a day. We were all young, around 20 years old, and most of us were some sort of college dropout who had enlisted in the USAF to avoid the uncertainty of being drafted. It was in March of 1966, when we all arrived at that language school.
One of the students among the class I was in was a young man who seemed out of place in that group of somewhat rowdy and irreverent young men. Quiet and something of a loner, he kept himself apart from group activities, studied hard and excelled in that specialized school environment. He was always looking for ways to help people. You could always count on him for a halting conversation in Russian to practice, but he remained aloof and seemed disconnected from the life going on around him. He studied hard, not just in our Russian courses, but also in other areas. He was a reader of the Bible, too. In that busy environment, I didn't really get to know him all that well. There was too much going on and he didn't seem that interested in social engagement.
After that course ended and we took some other training at an Air Force base, we were all sent to different assignments, mostly overseas. My orders sent me to a tiny remote base in Turkey, on the Black Sea coast. A few others from my Russian class group, including the young man I'm talking about, were also assigned to that base.
As luck would have it, I was assigned a room in the barracks with that guy. For the next 15 months, he and I would be roommates, and were on the same rotating shift group for the work we were doing there. So, I got to know him extremely well before long. We didn't have long conversations. He was a quiet guy, as I said. But, we did talk. He was constantly looking for ways to help people. If I left the room after getting out of bed, I'd come back to find the bed made perfectly. If the local worker who we paid to do our laundry dumped a pile of laundry on the bed, I'd come back to find it hung up neatly.
He was always polite, never argumentative, and always ready to do something for anyone else. Too much so, actually. Over time, his obsequious manner and constant deference became annoying. It's hard to explain. I learned that he did things for other people in the barracks, as well, unasked, and often unwanted. He seemed to live to serve others. It was awkward, really. If you thanked him, he wouldn't acknowledge it. If you said you could do those things yourself, he was visibly hurt. It was impossible to be angry with him. He was kind, helpful, soft-spoken and dedicated to what he was doing.
I tried asking him about himself and his family. He would speak briefly about that. He came from an Eastern European immigrant family. He had deep Roman Catholic roots. He once told me that he was trying to follow the example of Jesus in everything. He studied the life of Jesus. He studied the Roman Catholic saints. And he served others, whether they wanted to be served or not. There was nothing to complain about in his behavior, but he made everyone somewhat anxious with his constant attempts to do something for people. It was awkward.
Anyhow, after 15 months we were all done with our time in Turkey and, once again, assigned to new places. I ended up at Ft. George Meade in Maryland, assigned to duty in the NSA building located there. My roommate in Turkey went somewhere else, but I can't remember where. A few years later, after leaving the Air Force, I contacted some of the people from the Russian language school, by sending mail to their home addresses, which were listed in transfer orders. Just "How are you doing?" notes. Many answered, including my old roommate.
After leaving the USAF, he joined a Catholic religious order. A monastic order. He had decided to spend the rest of his life in contemplation, prayer, and service to others. I never heard from him again, after a brief note in response to my note mailed to the home he had grown up in. I've always wondered how his life went, but I no longer have any way to contact him. A strange person, he was, but someone who did his very best to follow a path he thought was the right one.
He was an ideal candidate for the life he chose. He never seemed to stray from his commitment, even when it caused a certain amount of discomfort in the people around him. He was a strange person.
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