My Most Singular Uncle - Sylvia Hohri

A Remembrance

The Eagle, a fragment by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

“The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from the mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.”

This poem so admired by my late uncle is one of many he committed to memory. Perhaps it was the vivid imagery, drama and brevity that appealed to him. Sohei appreciated the pithy aphorism.  He quoted, with a chuckle, from The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: “Life is nasty, brutish and short.” I remember his frequent request of me, “Sylvia, in a nutshell, please, a nutshell.” So, Sohei, I’ll try to keep it brief.

How can I ever describe the legacy left by my most singular uncle? His avid book collecting and extensive reading and re-reading, his  memorization of Shakespeare, Dante, Tennyson and Lincoln, among others,  his lifelong drawing and calligraphy practice, his community engagement, his 30+ year dedication to an august institution, love of the ocean and Chinese food, daily walks with, and devotion to, his dear wife, Valeria,  and his lightness of being. Ahh, this was a life well-lived!

In some ways it seems his private life as a book collector and his professional work as a librarian/curator were so closely intertwined they became who he was: all those books of literature, philosophy, history, natural science, and sailing that he read, and aspired to read. Remembering his large-scale ambition acts as a guidepost and inspiration. The pursuit of knowledge is probably what kept him going and also, humble.

Did The University of Chicago play a part in making the man? As a fellow alumna, I can only say, most certainly, for that is where I discovered the life of the mind, in particular, scholarship, its challenges and satisfactions.

But his reading of Les Miserables happened before college, in high school and, of all places, Manzanar concentration camp. You could only take what you could carry so he must have really wanted to take this book. I’ve been reading it recently as a way to stay close to Sohei. I recommend it to you, for it will remind you of him in so many ways:  its elegance, dignity, compassion, and awareness of suffering wrought by the powerful on the vulnerable, particularly, children.

I can’t think of my uncle without also remembering my father, William Hohri, to whom Sohei was a lifelong great friend. Their friendship probably began in the orphanage when my dad was three and Sohei, five. They were there because their parents had tuberculosis and were confined to a sanatorium for several years, leaving their children to fend for themselves. When reunited with his mother, my father had no recollection of who she was. The bond had been broken. But Sohei looked after his kid brother and was with him in camp, telling the classic tale of Jean Valjean to the children gathered around him nightly. Years after camp, from the halls of the University, Sohei wrote to his brother. He encouraged my father to apply, and so he did, changing the course of his life for the better.

My childhood memories of Sohei recall magic tricks – the multiplying bunnies and disappearing dimes, and his gentle way of saying, “Calm, calm” when my sister and I got too rambunctious. I recall his fondness for cats, especially Ra and Thoth, named after the Egyptian gods of sun and moon, and the mysterious Roofus who lived as an invisible, yet well-fed, presence above the apartment shared with Valeria.

In his last remaining months. Sohei was calling his friends to let them know he was in the nursing home. Some would start crying and railing against nursing homes. When I called him in February to wish him a happy birthday, marveling at his 90 years longevity, he replied, “It’s no big deal.”  He seemed quite content with what was happening and accepting of old age. Perhaps he was thinking of what Victor Hugo wrote, “To include in one’s life some sense of mortality is the law of the sage.” His wise words to me and, I believe, for all his friends, were, in a nutshell, “Be strong. Be calm. Be grateful.” 

Sylvia Hohri, July 18, 2015, Japanese American United Church, New York City