Repaying My Debt to Eugene England

As a fairly absent-minded personality, I nevertheless keep a careful account of my debts. And now I find myself owing something I hoped I’d be able to repay someday. How I expected to repay Eugene England for his influence on my education, literary direction, or happiness, is a little vague. The few letters of thanks I tried were failures—I could never find adequate words. Anyway, he was a person of action and a letter did not seem like enough. I want to find some way to honor a teacher and mentor I loved.

Maybe I thought that someday, using what he’d taught me (and a lot more skill and wisdom than I have now), I’d be able to in some way contribute to his efforts—to show him how much I believe in his vision for our people. I wanted to describe to him how it felt the day I met him, to sit on the floor in an overcrowded classroom and hear, for the first time, the verbal articulation of ideas and feelings I had only begun to understand on my own. Maybe I could apologize, too, for the way I followed him around after that, with the questions and ideas I then felt only he could help me with.

Among my favorite memories of him are the hours he spent with me in his office, talking me through academic projects and personal struggles. At one point, as I was bemoaning my inability to do all things at all times, he stopped me mid-gush and said, “Krista! Don’t you believe you have a Heavenly Father who loves you?” He’d really put his thumb on a problem I couldn’t pick out, and I’ve never forgotten that question. It put me in my place and still does.

When my father was considering a second temple marriage shortly after my mother passed away, Eugene England gave me essays to read and arranged for me to meet a favorite author. Without my asking he found me a job in my field, and his recommendations got me opportunities I couldn’t have had without him. Beyond his professional help, Eugene England showed me how far goodness could go. His goodness made Mormonism even sweeter to me and I loved him very much.

Eugene England helped hundreds like me and he did expect something in return, I think. There is a debt outstanding. Since hearing of his first illness I started to worry, wondering what we (what I) would do without the man who did the work of 50. There was a question I’d never put to him directly, but felt a real urgency to know: “After all that you’ve done for me, what can I do for you?” Probably the reason I never asked is that I didn’t think he’d like the question. Better to find out for myself and just do it; that is, follow his example: work for and love ideas and people. Find your responsibility and dedi­cate your life toward it, enduring to the end. “Speak the truth in love.” In his essay “On Spectral Evidence,” from the essay collection, Making Peace, Brother England says, “My calling is to be a teacher and writer, to use my gifts to seek and promote truth and virtue, and to build up the Kingdom of God (including the one that Jesus said was within each one of us) with all my means.”

The unease I still feel is because Brother England has gone before I could give back any of what I took. I feel it now a personal responsibility to honor what he asked of his students. He wanted a thoughtful, expansive literature from us, and for each member to examine her culture with kindness and without fear. He wanted us to know how to believe, how to ask, and how to love.

It’s not easy to say good-bye, even for a season. And how to offer my thanks and sorrow to the England family for their generosity and their loss—I don’t know how to do that either. His essays, and then his office when I moved to Utah, were places I could go to hear words that reaffirmed my faith and committed me to learning more about my religion and my people. This begins my tribute to Brother Eugene England, who was for me a father of Mormon literature and a most powerful advocate on the side of peace.

—Krista Halverson
from Irreantum 3.3 (Autumn 2001): 66