Dead Professor

Steve Cormier
Special to the Critic

Steve experiments with new age journalism among other things.

It was nearly 40 years later as I strode, uneasy-by-northwest, looking for a man none of us had ever known. Kalman Sandor Toth, who was this man, and why the hell was I being sent out to survey some rock just below left field?

I got there and the clouds were as low as my hopes. The walk had taken a lot out of me and any chances of an intelligent interview had been left behind with my lunch at the dining hall.

Cold October evenings rarely relay much information and indeed, Toth’s plaque was not feeling very forthcoming. Any attempt on my part to make it feel at home and comfortable with my line of questioning was met repeatedly with only name, rank and academic affiliation:

Kalman Sandor Toth, born September 27, 1907 in Szeged, Hungary. Immigrated to the United States in 1956. First Chairman of the mathematics department. Died November 25, 1968.

Sure, the rock and plaque were forthcoming but I needed more and talking to myself below an abandoned autumn baseball field would soon bring unwanted attention. Besides, I was feeling depressed. I would never be chairman of anything other than maybe a bowl of popcorn. I decided to go to bed.

I got up sometime between Wednesday and Saturday, somewhere between my room and the kitchen. I decided to hunt down Alan Boye, Curator of the Archaic at Lyndon State College. He had once regaled a class about the professor who had been buried on the campus and I figured that with his literary expertise on the ghoulish maybe he had interviewed the rock and gotten more. As a professional I was embarrassed with how the previous day had turned out.

I walked into the office, it was a mess. I was a mess though and nothing was lost in translation, we were on equal ground. A few papers pushed out of the way and Boye was handing over the documents, the history, the story and the man I needed: Toth.

The documents provided that not only had Toth come from Hungary but was involved in their attempted revolution to kick the Communists out in ’56. He fled to the United States that year seeing it as a “wonderland” and “land of opportunity” according to Toth’s daughter Erzsebet. These papers were being much more cooperative than that godforsaken rock and I was glad I had left it out in the cold.

Toth came to work at Lyndon in the fall semester of 1960 and joined the mathematics department before becoming its first chairman and is understood to have built up the major.

Toth died on November 25, 1968 as the result of a two-car collision on Route 5 in St. Johnsbury with the wish that he be buried on campus. Cremated, so his soul could be freed, his urn was interred in the grass that is now outside of the Alexander Twilight Theatre. At last he had found the peace and freedom that he had fought for a decade earlier.

This is not the end of our hero’s story though. After going out to the steel sculpture that now resides beside ATT and wandering around in the snow hoping not to look like a complete fool I discovered the truth.

Eight years after he had been interred, indeed during the construction of the very steel sculpture I now found myself sitting on, his urn and earthly remains were removed by the college and moved out to the hill between the Brown House and the baseball field.
At least Toth has the best view on campus now. My own view was all too morbid now. Too depressed – this freedom fighter, this esteemed academic, this honorable mathematician who had come half a world to LSC only to be moved – I decided to go find my intelligence and my lunch.