Frank A. Dobbs – 50th Reunion Essay

Frank A. Dobbs

College: Davenport

The big thing about Yale for me was unrealistic expectations about filling the needs of my personality as a truth seeker, of the kind that prefers the truth for its own sake, regardless of personal cost. I had been prepared to turn down HYP and go to a liberal arts college, but my time at the Sorbonne made the idea of a great university attractive. But instead of the community focused on learning and truth I imagined, it seems that I landed in a great social credentialing institution, with some wonderful people, but in which my search for truth was all but invisible. This was not Yale’s fault, but my own error of judgment. I frankly, then, did not care about my place in the world one little bit. Yes, I was young.

That sense of disassociation was radically changed a few years after graduation, when, much to my great surprise, I had a radical vision of God’s presence in the world, much like St Paul’s on the road to Damascus, and a voice that told me that everything they say about Jesus Christ was true. Once again, this was not what I was looking for in the least, but it was quite compelling in the way such experiences are. Unlike Paul’s, my conversion was not particularly fruitful in the world, but my faith and the insights it engendered have endured.

I married the perfect woman for me, compassionate, kind, fiercely intelligent, deeply religious and learned, but we were thrust together by the invisible Spirit that guides our longing and our days, and we fought mightily against it for four years of friendship, and continue to do so during 36 years of challenging marriage. My meek art historian wife eventually tired of my erratic efforts to support our family, so she went to law school and became a BigLaw corporate attorney, while I focused on the kids, and basically ignored my investment real estate in Manhattan, while by good luck it continued to appreciate. Investment disasters in New York real estate moved us from home to home until the Spirit gave us the idea to move into a forlorn building I bought next to the Holland Tunnel, pending being able to move to a nicer neighborhood. Since then we made it a state-of-the-art townhouse nestled among landmarked townhouses, and significant new buildings by Trump, Renzo Piano, Philip Johnson and Ian Schrager, in what has become the richest zip code in NYC. No credit to me.

My wife just retired from the law, and we face the challenge of living for the day, knowing we will fail at that also.

Best of all, my ramshackle townhouse by the Holland Tunnel might be the best location in the world to practice what is known as street photography, which I do constantly. I continue to write and translate poetry, read ancient Greek and French lit, worry about my two grown children, and have slowly come to accept that whatever gifts I possess have been essentially wasted, but that the completion of a life and a foretaste of Paradise and the love of family and friends and the comfort of God’s loving presence render those matters of little importance.