by John Pixley

Some years ago, I went to Pitzer College’s commencement ceremony to hear the speaker, Angela Davis, the fiery, militant Black Panther-turned respected if not universally admired philosophy professor. She was known at the time for speaking out against the “prison-industrial complex.” Early in her address to the graduates, she mentioned having briefly taught here at the Colleges a number of years ago.

I wonder if my dad met her — or perhaps hired her.

I’ve been thinking about this and other things, things I wished I’d asked my dad about, since he died on September 23 at the age of 96. Although I had been secretly rooting for him to make it to 100, he lived a remarkably long, and, as I was reminded in going over stuff for his obituary, rich life, some 40 years of it in Claremont.

For example, I was reminded that several years after moving here with my mom and older sister from San Francisco in the early 1960s when I was 2 to join the math department at then new Harvey Mudd College, he chaired a committee charged with finding ways to increase diversity at all the Colleges. This was a time of much unrest — Vietnam, Civil Rights — and I have vague memories of him talking to my mom, sometimes quite heatedly, about something called “Black studies.”

Did he meet Ms. Davis, or have a hand in having her come here to teach?

I knew dad biked to work and swam every day, rain or shine, in the college pool. I knew this, but there was plenty of other stuff about his work that I, and all the rest of us, didn’t know or at least understand. Him being the chair of the all-college diversity committee, or why he — a math professor — was in this position wasn’t that much of a mystery in comparison.

It was like my dad had another, secret life. His field of study was a very high level of algebra, far above the algebra II that I struggled through in high school to get a grade adequate to get into the University of California. In this rarefied math world, my dad was something of a rock star. After his death, we received e-mails from mathematicians and former students from all over the world offering condolences and singing his praises.

He was also something of a diplomat. Some of the mathematicians he worked with were in Hungary and Poland, in the shadow of the then Soviet Union, and he somehow arranged to have them visit the U.S., including Claremont. A few stayed in our house, which made for some weird dinnertime conversations.

This work gave the family some extraordinary benefits. In addition to extended stays in Vancouver, Canada, and Berkeley, we lived in Ferrara, Italy for eight months and in London for a year in the 1970s. My dad and mom pushed me in my wheelchair and sometimes carried me around in European cities, English villages, countless museums, castles, and country homes. It gave me a taste for good food and made me appreciate Little Bridges and the Scripps College campus all the more.

But in other ways, dad was just a dad. We went swimming at Scripps and Harvey Mudd and went Christmas caroling with other Claremont Colleges faculty families. We went camping and took trips up the coast.

He was quite a handyman and enjoyed designing and making things to make my life easier, like a board with a typewriter keyboard painted with nail polish (pink) that I could use when my speech was difficult to understand, and a small staircase with three carpeted steps so that I could literally climb into bed. Later, he introduced me to personal computers and e-mail when they first came out, with the idea that they would make work and communication easier for me.

Dad could be difficult. He was demanding, precise. In most if not all situations, there was only one right answer. He was, after all, a mathematician. Having him help me with math homework was often more of a challenge (“It’s obvious!” It wasn’t), and, later, we got into heated discussions about my decisions.

But, also with his mathematician’s eye, he appreciated beauty and encouraged me to enjoy nature, to enjoy the performing arts, to enjoy literature. When I left for college, he told me to explore and have fun. My dad taught me discipline and determination, and, as hard as these lessons sometimes were, they are why my life has been, despite all its physical challenges, so full, so productive, so rich. I am very grateful for this.