Remembering Dr. William G. Merhab
It was a bright, cheerful morning as I walked back across the Diag on the University of
Michigan campus that day in September of 1959. I was returning from my 8:00 am,
Saturday morning math class. As I walked under the Engineering Arch, I looked to the
right, and was reminded that Bill Merhab was often in his office early, so I decided to
stop by. Sure enough, he was hard at work on a project. Nevertheless, he welcomed me
with a characteristic warmth that I had come to crave in my fast-paced undergraduate
academic environment. There was something so “un-academic” about Bill, and yet so
clearly learned. I was transitioning from being a boy to becoming a man, and Bill was
one of the few adults I had known as a boy who seemed to make that process move
forward for me. He and I never talked about this – it just occurs to me now as I reminisce.
His secret was to always treat me as an equal, so he could remain constant while I
struggled with change, gradually evolving toward becoming an adult. But, I digress...
I spent some moments in Bill’s office that morning, awkward late teen moments,
drinking in his calmness, his steady sense of caring, and his respect for me. Then, I left
and walked out South University to Washtenaw, past the Mud Bowl, to my fraternity
house. I knew I had made the right decision to come to Michigan. Everything seemed
right in my life. I was growing up.
I was met at the steps of the Fiji house by my roommate, and two other brothers I liked
and respected. They asked me to accompany them to the “Inner Sanctum” (our name for
our fraternity President’s room). Then, with the same force that high-jacked jetliners have
recently impacted all of our lives, I learned of my father’s death that same morning –
probably at the moment I was sitting in Bill’s office. Things were not right in my life
again for a long time.
I felt as if Bill was my last tie to my previous life. Suddenly, I was on my own. I
continued my habit of stopping by his office that year, for reassurance that I was not
alone. He gave it willingly and freely, though perhaps as awkwardly as I received it.
Nevertheless, there was no question in either of our minds how powerful the bond
between us had suddenly become.
Bill had grown up with my father at Camp Storer and then as fellow students at
Michigan. My favorite story about their relationship is the “unofficial bartering” that
went on between them: My father, a member of the swim team, landed a “cushy job” as a
lifeguard in the pool in the Michigan Union. In another part of the Union, Bill made root
beer milkshakes of phenomenal reputation, behind the soda fountain counter. There were
many “free swims” traded for “free shakes”, I learned while growing up. I also heard Bill
recite The Cremation of Sam McGee, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Baldness of
Chewed-Ear Jenkins, and Casey at the Bat countless times as a boy when Bill would
come to visit my parents.
In many of the photos from the late 30’s and early 40’s, taken at camp, there are the faces
of Bill and my father, Ivan, proudly providing the support other boys, their
contemporaries or younger, needed – several of whom I’m sure are present today: Clark
Ewing, Carl Bruno, and others probably not present today: Bob Stollberg, Bob Ash,
Larry Bandfield.
I graduated from Michigan, said my good-byes to Bill, and set out for Chicago and my
first job with the YMCA. It was clear to me that there was some “footstep following”
going on in my life, though not necessarily the ones I thought I was following. I gave a
very exciting five years of my career to the YMCA, first as an “Assistant Boys Work
Secretary” (Is anyone still called that!), then as a Detached Worker with Gangs (I
probably caused more gang fights through the manipulations my gang members played
out on me, than prevented them.), and then as the Director of a program to use group
work to reach underachieving students on the south side of Chicago. It didn’t take me
long to realize I needed to know more about helping people and decided to return to
school for my doctorate. To make a long story short, I have ended up as a university
professor of social work, often hard at work in my office on Saturday mornings, not to
mention Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sundays as well. I
probably work harder and longer than I should, but it is freeing work, somehow guided
by the strength and quiet respect I received at the right time from Bill Merhab, my father,
Bob Stollberg, Carl Bruno, Clark Ewing, and, of course, Doc Miller.
Somewhere, along the way, my students began calling me “Doc Smith”, and at first, I
resisted it, feeling almost like an imposter pretending to adopt that title. I didn’t feel
anything like the legend I had met a few times as a boy, and always heard Bill and my
father refer to with such respect. It was like a silent, relentless whirling wind was
surrounding me and encouraging me to move forward with their spirit to accompany me.
Gradually, the name adopted me, at first with me resisting, and now with me as the proud
teller of Storer legends to my own students.
The last time I saw Bill Merhab was a summer’s day in the early 90’s. I was visiting my
son, Aric, who was in Dental School in Ann Arbor, and we had picked Bill up to take
him with us to visit camp. Some people at camp knew who he was, but most saw only a
slowly moving, rather thin old man. But his energy was still there. His wit was still
sparkling. As Bob Stollberg says, “Bill was always slight of build, skinny as a rail, and
flat-chested. Yet he was strong as an ox, and had great physical endurance.” That day at
Storer, he walked circles around the rest of us. Most of all, that day, I felt treated as an
equal, and I felt his respect.
We have all lost much in the past few weeks, but my most significant loss in this past
year has been Bill. We are all fortunate to have been touched by his spirit and Storer is all
the richer for the work he did here with the people who knew him and have heard stories
about him. Good bye, Jaloppy.
Marshall L. Smith
docsmith@umich.edu
October 20, 2001