COLLEGE PROFESSOR FALLS OUT A WINDOW

 

English Professor Falls Out Window

 It was the spring of 1963, and I was a freshman English major at Montclair State Teachers’ College (which dropped the Teachers’ at the end of that semester and has since exchanged College for University these days) and I had an elderly professor for Early English Literature who fell out a window…honest. As I said, he was old – ancient, actually, because my mother had had him in 1940! -- and on that nice spring day in 1963, he was sitting on the sill of an open window in a one-story, post-WW II wooden building that had been built for married veterans who were finishing college on the GI Bill, and he was reading some of THE CANTERBURY TALES in Middle English and he just fell out…I remember seeing his white bony legs and argyle socks in a pair of scuffed and unpolished brown loafers as he disappeared backwards…we all just sat there in shock, then some of us ran to the window, but he was gone…the next thing we knew, the door to the end of the pre-fab building slammed, and in Dr. Russell Kraus came, still holding the open book, and still reading…with bits of leaves and grass in his remaining white hair and his horn-rimmed glasses somewhat askew…as if nothing had happened. It became a legend at Montclair State…don’t know if anyone tells the story anymore so I thought I’d preserve it here, before those of us who witnessed the moment are all gone.