Farewell My Mentor

I lost my friend and teacher this week.

https://robersonfh.com/obituary/robert-clinton-beauchamp/

This week I lost a friend and mentor. His name is Rob Beauchamp and I have known him since I was 15-years-old.

When I met Rob it was at the YMCA in Huntington, WV. Skinny and academic, I was eager to become stronger and tougher and I saw an advertisement for a Tae Kwon Do class. I showed up in that old, beautiful building and met Rob and his wife Sallie who was also a Tae Kwon Do teacher and ballerina. And my life was forever changed and enriched.

Rob was perhaps the tallest man I had ever met at that point. He was strong, kind and committed. He was working as a Cabell County paramedic at the time and would often appear exhausted from the stress of working in EMS. I get it. His eyes would be tired and he would arrive in his EMS uniform on and would then change into his dobalk, the uniform of Korean martial arts. I remember that he often had a cup of coffee in his hand and could have used some sleep. But he showed up and poured heart, soul and body into teaching us and making us into better, stronger and more confident young men and women through the vehicle of martial arts.

Ultimately I was the first black belt that he and Sallie produced. I was, they joked, their ‘firstborn.’ That reality was precious to me. I was a young man with no interest in normal sports. I couldn’t hit a baseball, played passable backyard basketball and tried running junior high school track but running just seemed so, well, it’s running so you get it.

But the idea of become a fighting machine? Absolutely! At 15 that called up images of Chuck Norris, Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace and Bruce Lee. I wanted that. Ultimately I was never a tournament competitor but I developed fitness, a solid punch and a good front kick and side kick. My fantasies of being an elite weapon of destruction never materialized. But more important things happened, and I suppose that was the idea all along.

I developed discipline and commitment. I learned to work-out drenching in sweat in the park in Summer, or shivering in the assorted studios that Rob and Sallie rented down the years, sometimes so cold that it made your feet ache to be barefoot in the West Virginia Winter. I learned to teach others and to lead. I persevered and attained a 2nd Dan black belt, and later 3rd Dan and was a decent Tae Kwon Do student and instructor.

Around that time came medical school and all of the effort and energy required by a medical education. While medical education did not require that I fight anyone (well, maybe figuratively) it did require that I press on, no matter how exhausted or demoralized I was. And I can thank Rob, and Sallie, for that gift.

I don’t think that Rob (devotee of Korean martial arts) would be offended if I quote Morehei Ueshiba, the Japanese founder of Aikido, when I say:

‘Masakatsu Agatsu.’ That is, ‘True victory is victory over self.’ Rob would understand that. And my experience with him as a mentor helped me to overcome the negativity, the easy desire to take an easier path, the self-defeat that could so easily have afflicted me on my journey.

Fortunately, Tae Kwon Do was only the beginning. Over the years our friendship continued without pause, as true friendships do. Rob and Sallie had sons Clinton and Tim. Jan and I had our four children. Rob continued to teach and opened Tae Kwon Do schools in Tennessee and Florida, ultimately attaining an 8th Dan black belt.

We worked together for a while doing consulting work for the DOJ in what was called the ‘Domestic Preparedness Program.’ We traveled and taught first responders how to manage casualties from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It was a great time to be back together again in cities around the country.

Even after that we would periodically talk and catch up on life. He was ever the encourager and sounding board. I even think that, in a very real way, his involvement in EMS and his stories were part of what shepherded me into a career in emergency medicine.

This is my 29th year as an emergency physician and I always knew along the way that I could tell Rob stories of the joys and frustration of the work and he would get it. He had been there, as a paramedic and later a nurse. Maybe, since he was like a father to me, my career was a kind of homage to him. To the extent that it’s true, many patients down the years owe thanks to his influence. (And a few physicians owe thanks to the restraint he taught me when now and then I wanted to break out some moves and meet a colleague in the parking lot. But I didn’t!)

In September of 2021, my father, Keith passed away after a long illness. We were at the funeral when I looked up and who should walk in but Rob and Sallie. They drove from all the way from Florida to be with me in that time. I was so grateful I could never really express it.

During that meeting our daughter Elysa sat and talked with both of them, as they described the retirement home they were building in Port Charlotte, FL and the sailboat they used to travel the keys. She was excited to go and seem them this Summer. That would have been a perfectly complete circle, really, for my child to spend time with the man and woman who shaped me so palpably.

But this week Rob left us. It is hard for me to fathom it. He was one of those men who seem as if they’ll always be present. In a real way he will be, because he lives on through his biological sons and the sons and daughters that he and Sallie raised in classes and in ongoing friendships.

I have lost many people in my life but few have hit me as hard as this loss. Maybe even more because I cannot go to his memorial. Rob would also understand this. I am a physician in an emergency department. I am starting a new job tomorrow in a hospital that is already short staffed. I cannot leave and I cannot be there to share laughter and stories, to cry and mourn with Rob’s widow and with all of my Tae Kwon Do siblings. This is bitter to me. But it is the price of emergency services. I have missed the funerals of family before and now, alas, I miss another.

But this I wrote to him and to Sallie. As a writer it is a small gift I can gift in his memory. I am sorry, so very sorry that I cannot offer the same comfort to her that Rob and she offered to me in my loss.

Once, when I was in college, I went to Florida with Rob and Sallie. I remember going sailing with them. There was laughter and there were stories. And at one point I looked up to see Rob standing on the bow, holding the rigging and looking out across the sea in reverie. He had long, blonde hair then, and for all the world I saw a Norseman at sea. And with a name like Beauchamp, perhaps he bore that DNA.

But I can’t help thinking that when his heart attack struck and after the medical providers had done their best and he passed, that he sailed gloriously into the harbors of heaven, for Rob was a Christian and believed in that life after life. A Christian Norseman coming home to safe harbor. I like that.

I’ll see Rob again. We’ll laugh and hug and probably cry a little, if tears are possible in that great Kingdom. But I am sure of it. He was, to me, larger than life and someone like him simply doesn’t end.

This poem by Henry Van Dyke seems a perfect tribute.

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...

Farewell friend, mentor, teacher. Until we work out again.

I love you and Sallie.

Your ‘firstborn,’

Edwin