February 2008

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A Tribute to Dr. Emilio Rodriguez

Editor’s Note: Emilio Rodriguez, a professor of International Studies at Mount Saint Mary’s University and a longtime ICPJ Board member, died suddenly on November 1, 2007, while leading a study abroad group in Dublin, Ireland. The following tribute is by John Miller, a 1999 Mount St. Mary’s graduate, now living in Brussels, Belgium, and working as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

If you knew Emilio Rodriguez, it is easy to list some of his loves: politics, cigars, Duke basketball, America, war simulation games, astronomy, the European Union, Gettysburg Battlefield.

I’ve seen Milo only a handful of times since I graduated in 1999. Hearing of his death on November 1 while teaching a study abroad program in Ireland, it was his passions that came quickly to mind. The true list is way longer.

Here’s why his presence burns so brightly. Your hobby, too, might be debating the Treaty of Rome or smoking cigars, but there’s no way you do it with as much fire and pleasure as this combative and joyful friend of ours. And he didn’t have only one hobby. He was like a kid walking wide-eyed through a candy store. Wanna come over for cigars, talk politics, watch some football and I’ll invite Kristen and Robert and. . .? Yeahhh. Like he could never believe he lived in a world so fun.

Once, he talked me and a professor into trekking out to the middle of Gettysburg Battlefield to watch stars. We smoked cigars and marveled at the big sky. Milo was a Protestant, but his true religion was wonder. More than once, during the middle of a lecture, he broke into this speech: “And think about it, we’re just this giant blue ball, hanging there in space, and it’s such a damned miracle if you think about it.” Silence in the classroom. “Now, about Nasser. . . ”

I lived and studied with Milo for the four years before his kidney transplant. His sense of humor about the grave diabetic condition that would kill him was so disarming it dawned on us only so slowly. “I’m a time bomb.” He would actually say it, with that raspy, nasal drawl, and you’d have to laugh. “Wanna come over for cigars? I got some Cubans.” By the time you were in his comfy leather chair, admiring his book about Panzer tanks or mock pictures of himself as commander of the “Northern Gettysburg Alliance, ” you’d forgotten the time-bomb thing.

In 1999, graduation year, he was on a list for a new kidney, “waiting for some poor bastard to crack,” as he put it. He told stories about his disease, always downplaying his suffering, but I’m sure he lived through hell he never confessed. Complaining wasn’t going to get anybody anywhere. And besides, Duke’s on TV, so screw it, come over and talk politics, and we’ll crack open a bottle. Now about Reagan’s foreign policy. . . "

He was so proud of his family. His brother was in the secret service, and guarded the first president Bush. “And my brother was telling me, Bush likes to fish, and he’s a nice guy, and. . . ”

Over drinks during a European Union simulation in Washington -- the mock political summits that are one of his enduring legacies at the Mount -- he told me about how much he loved his wife, Amy. “You know, here’s what marriage is like: yeah on some days, you don’t get along, but then sometimes, you’re sitting on the porch with your wife, and the sun is setting, and you feel really, really deeply happy, and then you think, ‘Man, I could do a lot worse. ’”

And John Paul. Nothing made Milo prouder that having a son in the military. He might have been a rabble-rousing lefty, but at heart, he was the purest patriot. Even more than politics, he loved the fight. He was at home as a Protestant in a Catholic school (“Those crazy Catholics ...”), a Cuban-American in the heartland (“No, it’s not pronounced Rodrigwez ...”), and a progressive in a dogmatic age (“What we need in this country is a revolution ...”).

It was easy to imagine him at other times in history, as a sniper for George Washington, or planting a bomb under a Nazi train. I’m sure he admired the revolutionary Fidel, while hating the freedom-crushing Castro. He believed in the fight of the hero.

Milo is a hero, for battling death with such strength, humor and grace, and relishing life from spice to space. I was trying to explain to my wife last night what he was like. “You never saw a man who fought so hard to live, and loved it so much,” was the best I could come up with.

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