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A Constant Revelation: Thomas Lawler
By Thomas Anderson ’72
 Tom Lawler flipped my brain, saved my love life, inspired a career and provided an after-burn of lessons in competence and social consciousness. He may be responsible for where I live.
I’m not sure why I took his course on 17th century poetry in 1969. Perhaps it was a requirement. I was supposed to be a scientist; I’d had my own laboratory and equipment at a progressive high school. Science was study; science was work; science was nobler. His course: a constant revelation, an unveiling of possibilities. You could wrap exploration, sex, faith, love and death in long conceits; you could play with structure on a page. You could do this with this?You could say it this way?
Was it the subject or the man or me at that particular time? Frye called it (1968-72) the “Age of Hysteria,” with the war and drugs and draft lotteries and revolutions. It was a crazy time. The 17th-century was rather rocky and maybe that resonated with the ’60s. I was ready for a change myself with the smell of benzene bubbling in round bottom flasks and calculus breaking into finer and finer bits of abstraction.
I remember Tom Lawler was always prepared and enthusiastic about class and encouraging, a model for anyone doing anything at any time. He knew his subject excessively well, and he made it come alive. He had a big impact. I had great
teachers before and after: Rev. William Healy, S.J., John Mayer; Stephen Teichgraeber, John Dorenkamp, and others. But Tom Lawler was a trigger, and he catalyzed a radical change in my direction, thinking and writing. He had career advice and back-up career advice, which came later when I was a senior, advice which helped me adapt and survive the fat belly of the baby boom.
So—the flip: chemistry to English.
The save: a recording of Richard Burton reciting John Donne love poems.
The career: “You won’t be happy unless you do something creative.”
The homestead: Appleton House (see Andrew Marvell).
The social consciousness: Tom Lawler’s work in prisons, which I heard about decades later.
I’d like to be as good in what I do as he was—as competent, as prepared, as excited, as connected.
He still inspires.
A guest lecturer at Boston University and Boston College on Internet Strategy and e-business, Tom Anderson is vice president for corporate communications at Millipore, a bioscience/biotech multinational company. He resides in Needham, Mass., with his wife, Janice.
More essays:
Above and Beyond the Call: Peter Parsons
A Constant Revelation: Thomas Lawler
The Critical Questions: William Morse
"You can always work even harder": Rev. Henry E. Bean, S.J.
The Potential This Day May Hold: Helen Whall
Always Be Open to the Possibilities: Ogretta McNeil
The Liberator: Bill Grattan
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