Vic Tyus is someone I can hardly believe is dead. I had been thinking he was probably holed up somewhere writing an account of life in our times. He showed up in my life several times over the years since we graduated. The first time, he came to visit when I was at Barnard and living in the dorms. I've wiped that visit out of my memory, but he later reminded me that Barnard had considered it part of its duty to notify my parents that I was going out with a Negro. When he came to dinner at my apartment near Columbia in the '70s it was to say he'd been living in Sweden, to escape the draft. He'd written a novel that was a best-seller there and was teaching at a university but felt the future there was all too predictable and had chosen to come back to the United States. I remember having drinks with him at the Top of the Sixes (lots of free hors d'oeuvres), where we agreed that we both loved Evelyn Waugh, even though Waugh looked down his nose at both women and blacks. The next time he showed up he was working at Citibank and I'd moved to Long Island City. When he came to dinner at my apartment there, my horrible Croatian landlady came knocking on my door to tell me that someone had told her a black man had come into the building. I told her he was a friend of mine. I told him she was old. I think I remember a conversation in which we both said we'd thought when we were in high school and integrating a skating rink in Cincinnati that racism would soon be a thing of the past. I remember him at our 25th reunion, looking elegant and greeting Baron Wilson in his impeccable French. The last time I saw Vic, he was living up around Columbia and we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant that dated back to my time at Barnard (and that is no longer there). I'd brought him a box of typewriter ribbons I'd liberated from my place of employment (the corporation was moving out of the city, and its employees were all stocking up on office supplies). But I noticed that his typewriter, in his rather bleak apartment, was missing a foot, so it wasn't stable. He noticed that I'd noticed and said, "Not a good sign, is it?" But when I didn't hear from him again, I always hoped he was holed up somewhere, writing.
Name: Victor H Tyus
Brenda J. Woodward
Vic Tyus is someone I can hardly believe is dead. I had been thinking he was probably holed up somewhere writing an account of life in our times. He showed up in my life several times over the years since we graduated. The first time, he came to visit when I was at Barnard and living in the dorms. I've wiped that visit out of my memory, but he later reminded me that Barnard had considered it part of its duty to notify my parents that I was going out with a Negro. When he came to dinner at my apartment near Columbia in the '70s it was to say he'd been living in Sweden, to escape the draft. He'd written a novel that was a best-seller there and was teaching at a university but felt the future there was all too predictable and had chosen to come back to the United States. I remember having drinks with him at the Top of the Sixes (lots of free hors d'oeuvres), where we agreed that we both loved Evelyn Waugh, even though Waugh looked down his nose at both women and blacks. The next time he showed up he was working at Citibank and I'd moved to Long Island City. When he came to dinner at my apartment there, my horrible Croatian landlady came knocking on my door to tell me that someone had told her a black man had come into the building. I told her he was a friend of mine. I told him she was old. I think I remember a conversation in which we both said we'd thought when we were in high school and integrating a skating rink in Cincinnati that racism would soon be a thing of the past. I remember him at our 25th reunion, looking elegant and greeting Baron Wilson in his impeccable French. The last time I saw Vic, he was living up around Columbia and we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant that dated back to my time at Barnard (and that is no longer there). I'd brought him a box of typewriter ribbons I'd liberated from my place of employment (the corporation was moving out of the city, and its employees were all stocking up on office supplies). But I noticed that his typewriter, in his rather bleak apartment, was missing a foot, so it wasn't stable. He noticed that I'd noticed and said, "Not a good sign, is it?" But when I didn't hear from him again, I always hoped he was holed up somewhere, writing.