When I was taking the SoulCollage facilitators training, I wrote
an entry at Sacred Ordinary about The Green Wheelbarrow with thanks to William
Carlos Williams and his poem The Red Wheelbarrow. And I thanked Stephen Jama, an English teacher I had in the 1970s at El Camino College. This post generated some e-mail wondering if I knew more about where he was as he was admired by others. Though our relationship was superficial at best, I’ve always been so
grateful to Stephen for getting my creative juices flowing. I lost track of him and
El Camino College would not give me any information about him after his
retirement. Recently TerryGR posted that Stephen had passed away in 2004. I requested more
information and I received this today. Then I found myself e-mailing back wishing nostalgically that I had stayed in touch. This is what TerryGR sent today.
I'm very sorry to have been the source of such sad news, but I happened across your mention of Stephen, so thought you ought to know. Stephen was a customer/friend of mine for over twenty years, and though we only met in person a handful of times, we usually talked several times a week...chiefly about books.
He started having severe health problems, and fortunately was, in a fashion, "adopted" by a wonderful couple whose children he tutored. They moved off to the Pacific Northwest, where he had as much care as he could possibly need, and beautiful skies to look at. Early in 2004 his health slid precipitously, and he died of congestive heart failure.
We ended up buying the major portion of his books (excluding those he'd given to Kent State over the years), many of which he'd bought from us.
I can imagine what Stephen was like as a teacher...I know he is very much missed in the book collecting world.
With all best wishes,
Terry Halladay - Literature Manager
William Reese Company - Rare Books and Manuscripts
New Haven, CT. 06511 USA
This new information about Stephen’s later life has really flooded me with memories of a time when I was morphing from traditional wife and mother into finding out more about the world I lived in. I never told him how valuable he was to me at a crossroads in my life. Here is what I replied to TerryGH and I guess I am posthumously honoring Stephen by doing so.
Thank you so much for telling me about Stephen's final years, which made me feel so nostalgic again. How I wish I had stayed in touch. You can count on one hand the number of people who left a significant life-changing mark and he was one of them for me. I was working at El Camino and then began taking classes in poetry from him, mid '70s, I would think. I was a "returning" student to education and because he somehow opened a creative window in me through his teaching, I ultimately met his friend Mike Mahon who taught English at Cal State Dominguez Hills. I went on to get a B.A. and M.A. at Dominguez and lost track of him when my marriage fell apart and I faced into my new world. Mike Mahon was one of my thesis advisors for my M.A. Stephen was eccentric, smoked like a chimney, and he was intellectually brilliant. For a time my husband and I were invited to some of the parties he and his friends had. He had a gourmet kitchen to die for and I once remember sitting for hours at a party listening to the Ring; my husband was extremely uncomfortable around Stephen and his friends, but to me Stephen was the West Coast version of the literary crowd hanging in the Village.
Stephen encouraged all of us to create broadsides and I do have three of his which I cherish.
I'm so glad that he was befriended by the family who took him to the Pacific Northwest to live out his life. Was he in Washington? I seem to remember that he had a sister. Do you know if he did? I gather you were in Connecticut at the time, but Stephen loved the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica. He also introduced us to The Firehouse in Venice where we would go for poetry readings.
Do you know if he wrote a memoir or an autobiography? I would imagine Kent State would have it. I'll have to pursue that collection. I am an archivist myself for a small private local school.
Thanks again for letting me know. People occasionally e-mail to see if I know anything about him and now I do.
This link of the Kent State Archives will take you to broadside Stephen wrote in memory of the Kent State student slayings in a protest on May 4, 1970.
