Tim Darrin '74
By John Steinbreder
As the actress Bette Davis once said, getting old is not for sissies. And for those of us of a certain age, we must contend with near-constant aches and pains. Occasional lapses of memory, too. Then, there are the deaths of people close to us.
The loss of Tim Darrin, a fellow member of Franklin’s class of 1974, hit me especially hard. It wasn’t that he and I were particularly close in our post-Lugano lives, though we did see each other on occasion in California. But the impact of those times we spent together at Franklin endures to this day, with Tim serving in some ways like Menalcas, André Gide’s mentor in his lyrical novel, Fruits of the Earth, and me his eager student, Nathaniel.
“I will teach you fervor,” Menalcas told Nathaniel, imploring him to seek adventure and learn from those experiences.
None of this is to say that Tim assumed that role with me intentionally. It’s simply one of the things that often happened at Franklin, as returning students showed newcomers just how fulfilling an education from that institution could be for those willing to “go out from your town, from your family, from your room and from your thoughts.”
I was just 18 years old when I arrived in Lugano in September 1974. There was no student housing in those days, and we had to find places to live pretty much on our own. We also had to learn about the cultural differences of our new home, such as how the city of Lugano shut down for a lengthy riposo in the middle of each weekday. Then, there was the matter of becoming proficient enough in Italian to buy groceries and gas with relative ease and converse with our landlords when it was time to pay the monthly rent.
Less than two months later, I was in Turkey on Academic Travel with 30 or so of my fellow students, Tim among them. Leading the expedition was our Mediterranean Civilization professor Horus Schenouda and Herb Stothart, who taught art history. I knew this was going to be different from the lectures and keg parties most of my friends were attending at their colleges back in the States when I took my first stroll through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, dazzled by the smells of freshly roasted cumin seeds and just-ground cinnamon wafting in the air and the chattering of shoppers and merchants as they bargained over everything from rugs to leather jackets.
“This is really different,” I said to Tim as we wandered around that 75-acre complex. “And really fun.”
The same could be said of other things we saw and did during that journey. Such as the impromptu performance some of us gave under Dr. Schenouda’s direction on the stone stage of the Great Theater at Ephesus, describing how our bus had become stuck in the mud the previous day and how we pushed ourselves out of the mire.
During the tour of another ancient city, Aphrodisias, Tim and I stopped to eat the seeds of pomegranates we picked from trees shading the ruins of a Roman bath, sitting on slabs of marble that had been there since before Christ as we did so.
Our last night in country, we checked out a handful of meyhanes in the seaside city of Izmir. These tavern-like establishments offered live Turkish music and served hot and cold mezes along with glasses of an anise-flavored liquor called raki that turned milky white when mixed with water. And we traveled from one to the other in the backs of 1950s-era Fords and Chevys that made up most of the cab fleet in town, most of them sporting what Tim called “futuristic fins.”
As we exited the last of the meyhanes we visited that night, we came upon a bakery that was quite busy even though it was 3 a.m. The proprietor greeted us cheerfully, handing us a loaf of bread that he had just pulled from one of his ovens. Desperate for something to soak up all the raki we had consumed, we tore into the bread, so warm that steam rose from the loaf as we pulled it apart. And when we were finished with our snack, we headed back to our hotel, another day of learning Franklin-style coming to an end.
Tim was a good friend but an even better teacher, whether he knew it or not. And I will never forget all that he gave me in that regard during my time at Franklin. Which is why I jumped at the chance to contribute to the scholarship fund created in his name shortly after his passing, with the Margaret A. Darrin Charitable Trust offering to match all donations made within July 31 towards the Tim Darrin ’74 Scholarship Fund, up to a total of $250,000.
I hope many other members of the Franklin community decide to do the same.
John Steinbreder ’76 is the managing editor of GGPBiz and the course architecture and travel editor at Global Golf Post. An award-winning journalist with some 40 years of experience, John is the author of 24 books. Prior to graduating from the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism, Steinbreder studied at Franklin Switzerland and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. John has served Franklin as Alumni Trustee and member of the Alumni Council. He and his wife Cynthia have two daughters, Exa and Lydia, and live in Redding, Connecticut.