A sharp pain in his upper arm jarred Dick Eastman out of a sound sleep one night in February 1997. A man used to taking things in stride, the 81-year-old retired professor merely took some pain medication.
When the ache persisted, he applied a heating pad. Later, when a call to his doctor ignited concern that he might be having a heart attack, Eastman allowed his wife, Vivian, to drive him to Edward Hospital, not far from their home in Naperville.
The diagnosis was clostridium, an extremely rare but deadly illness also referred to as gas gangrene, which more commonly strikes wounded soldiers on the battlefield and has a mortality rate of 65 percent. (How Eastman came to contract the disease remains a mystery.) A helicopter rushed Eastman to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where surgeons amputated his left arm and a portion of his shoulder.
“If we had waited another six hours, he would have been dead,” said Dr. Kimball Maull, Eastman’s surgeon at Loyola.
“It was a very scary time when we had to call the children,” Vivian said quietly as she recalled the early-morning telephone calls summoning their three grown daughters from their homes in New York, North Carolina and California. “It all happened so fast. Our friends and relatives were all there for us. We all said a lot of prayers.”
As a result of the overwhelming infection, Eastman lapsed briefly into a coma, then slipped in and out of consciousness for five weeks, frequently hallucinating.
“He was at death’s door. There was a 90 percent chance of him dying,” Maull said. “But although the likelihood of his survival was not good, we hadn’t given up hope. We continued to work with him.”
Incredibly, Eastman regained full consciousness and began recovering, something Maull calls miraculous.
Once he awoke, confused and disoriented, family members gently explained the ordeal from which he had emerged, along with the devastating loss of his arm.
The soft-spoken Eastman did not cry out in despair or rail against the fates that had doled out these circumstances. Instead, he uttered with quiet, deep-felt sadness, “No more recorder.”
Among Eastman’s passions is music, particularly that created on the recorder. Eastman has written a number of musical compositions for recorders that have been published, and he has played with a recorder ensemble of about eight musicians for the last 16 years. In addition to enjoying frequent practices together, this group, called the West Winds, performs at weddings, receptions and other special occasions. The thought of Eastman’s not being able to participate anymore was disheartening for all members of the group. (Though Eastman is right-handed, playing the recorder requires two hands.)
Still, once Eastman had recovered enough to go home, nearly two months after the ordeal began, the West Winds made a point of including Eastman in their rehearsals. “We did all we could to make him feel like he was still a member of the group,” said Joann Stamm of Aurora, a longtime friend and recorder partner. “After all, he’s the one who has kept us together. He’s the glue.”
In spite of losing the ability to enjoy some of his treasured activities, Eastman noted calmly that sinking into depression was not even a consideration.
“I was pretty neutral. I didn’t have any ups or downs,” he said. “I’ve just taken it all in stride. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Now, just one year after his life-threatening illness and surgery, Eastman’s life has settled back into a comfortable rhythm. While answering questions recently about his life, Eastman relaxed on a sofa in the living room of his pleasant ranch home, not far from North Central College in Naperville, where he was a professor of English and humanities for 36 years and from which he has received several honors and awards.
Although his demeanor is dignified with a touch of old-fashioned formality, Eastman also conveys a gracious, genuine warmth.
Clearly, not only has Eastman gone on with his life, he also has made the best of it. On a typical day, he is seated at his desk by 7:45 a.m., engaging in another of his passions: writing. A published author of numerous books and articles (including essays printed in the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers), as well as a co-founder of the Naperville Writers Group, Eastman noted that his former creative routine is now a bit more awkward.
“Ordinary tasks around the desk are difficult,” he said, “like putting on paper clips and filing. They’re hard to do with one hand. I also write everything down longhand first, and it’s hard to keep the paper steady. I have to put my palm down on the paper, so my writing is cramped.” Typing relies on what he refers to as the one-handed hunt and peck.
In the same spirit of making do and moving on, it didn’t take long for Eastman to fully reclaim his rightful place in the West Winds ensemble. In fact, through the use of technology, he is still able to create recorder music, using a special switch on his synthesizer keyboard.
“It sounds remarkably like a recorder,” he noted, before stepping over to the keyboard to demonstrate his one-handed technique. Because the keyboard is far less portable than a recorder for the West Winds performances, Eastman provides alternate musical accompaniment. “When we go out, I’m the percussion man,” he said. “I play the drums, triangle or tambourine.”
Longtime friend and colleague Donald McVicker acknowledges that it was completely in character not only for Eastman to survive but also to set his life swiftly back into fruitful motion. McVicker, a professor of anthropology at North Central College, has known Eastman for 24 years and has observed what he calls Eastman’s sense of perseverance.
“Nothing is going to interfere with what he feels is the direction things should go, even if it’s a life-threatening medical crisis. He will endure,” McVicker said. Part of Eastman’s determination, McVicker theorized, is due to his sense of obligations left unfulfilled. “He really did want to have a number of years left with Vivian and his daughters,” he said.
McVicker’s acquaintance with Eastman dates to McVicker’s interview when he was applying for a job at the college. Eastman was the interviewer and impressed McVicker as “a true gentleman and a scholar, a combination that’s hard to find these days. I decided that if someone like Dick Eastman could make his home at North Central College, I could too.”
Eastman’s life in academia began with the accumulation of his own degrees, including a bachelor of arts degree from Oberlin College in Ohio, graduate study at Yale University, and a doctorate with honors from the University of Chicago. During his years at North Central College (1946-1982), Eastman not only served as a faculty member but also as the chairs of English, humanities and general studies; dean of faculty; and vice president for academic affairs. He received several awards for excellence in teaching during his years as an instructor.
“He was very highly regarded on campus, held in very high esteem,” McVicker noted. “He stood as a model for many of us.”
As for how Eastman was viewed by students, McVicker revealed that he had a reputation for being “tough, rigorous in his demands, but always fair.” McVicker added that one way to gauge a professor’s popularity among students is the number of them who keep in touch after graduation. In Eastman’s case, that number is impressive, McVicker said.
Even after his retirement in 1982, Eastman was far from forgotten at North Central. That year he received the title of professor emeritus, a retired professor in good standing. In 1992, he was made an honorary alumnus of the college, in recognition of his contributions. Then in 1993, his contributions to both the college and the community earned him an honorary doctorate degree in humane letters.
“It is very rare for a college to honor one of its own retired professors (with an honorary degree),” McVicker pointed out. “It’s usually given to other people within the community.”
Just before he fell ill, Eastman achieved a cherished personal goal: His first book of fiction, “Tangled Tassels: Tales of Academe” (Mayhaven Publishing, $17.95) was published. The compilation of short stories unveils interesting facets of college life and has received favorable reviews. Although Eastman stressed that the stories and characters are fictional, he notes in his preface that most of them “have germinated from personal experience in a small liberal arts school.”
Among his current, post-recovery goals is the determination to help his book garner more attention. “It deserves wider notice than it has yet received,” Eastman said. Another goal is to publish his newest collection of short stories, which features a wide variety of subjects and bears the working title “The Robin Who Was too Fat to Fly South, and Other Stories.”
In the meantime, Eastman greets each new day determined to accept whatever it will bring. Although his disability can occasionally cause a flare of frustrated anger, “My temperament is fairly even. I can take most things that happen. I enjoy life.”
