More About JMJ
JMJ-CNP
JMJ-JAJ
JMJ-JKH
JMJ-NFJ
Jay Monroe Jensen, M.D.
"Relentless"
A Eulogy:
Chase Nebeker Peterson, M.D.*
December 12, 1995
Jay Monroe Jensen is immortal today in the words of Peter in the family prayer and in Art's sensitive projection of a father's image. There is little to add but perhaps that little would be appropriate.
We are here to honor a good life and to commit ourselves to support and nourish a widow and children and grandchildren.
Jay Monroe, son of cowboy, Art, and schoolteacher, Violet Monroe, lived the life he wanted--the life that was the honest extension of the cowboy and the teacher. He passed on those traditions, up a few notches, to seven remarkable children. Bebe was there, and is there, and will always be there and now especially for those grandchildren who need even more to know her and their grandfather.
Fly the flag at half-mast at Yankee Stadium. Even, too, at Fenway Park; in Ft. Lauderdale at spring training; at the University of Utah; at the University of Chicago; and in Elsinore. Let there be a moment of silence of the next chapter meeting of the "Utah Association of Independent Thinkers", sometimes called the "Are you Sure Society? or "Every Good Community Needs a Dependable Nonsense Debunker."
Jay Monroe is about to return to the roots he never left in Elsinore. He and Bebe were the stock and the flowers are those unique and wonderful children strewn from New Hampshire to California, all tethered to Elsinore.
The Peterson's got mixed-up with the Jensen's decades ago when Jay Monroe was a young boy sitting in a pick-up truck between his father and my father. Jay Monroe tells of one of those crystal moments of childhood when my father began discussing education with this eight or ten year old child. After Jay Monroe allowed as how he wanted to be a doctor, he remembered my father suggesting that the University of Chicago would be a good place to study. To the young boy, the suggestion became matriculation ten or fifteen years later. What a match! Jay Monroe and Robert Hutchins and the University of Chicago. Jay Monroe never recovered from that intellectual innoculation.
When we called our children to inform them of Jay Monroe's passing, I asked our daughter what memories she had of him. There was a short pause, really no pause, and she said, "Relentless."
Relentless in the pursuit of new ideas. "Didn't he decide one day to read all of Freud?," she asked. He did.
The Peterson's and the Jensen's didn't touch again until 1972 when Jay Monroe called to ask about the suitability of Harvard College for first son, Art. Art went Harvard and thereafter there was a succession of Fred's, and Judy's in our home in Cambride--each enriching our family--and as children all alone, as it were, punctuated by ceremonial visits like commencement, or the like--the like being visits to Fenway Park. A decade later, the Peterson's were able to share Karen and Peter at our University home and Chris and Nicoline near-bye. So unusual and yet so natural and so complimentary and complementary: the Jensen's and the Peterson's across sixty years found each other's ideas of interest. We still do.
Relentless. The house could be burning down and Jay Monroe would not likely stir; his face screwed-up in that focused way of his when he had an idea in his sights.
Few are permitted to stay where they are and simulaneously grow into something larger. The cowboy and the son of the cowboy never lost his love of the ranch or its values yet the scholar-doctor was an admirable expression of his teacher mother. The seed became the fruit and was still the seed. And we see an accurate expression in the next generation here gathered.
Did he ever love and support and defend his children! Karen remembers being kept home from school one day when she had some responsibility. She remembers her father telling a less than understanding teacher, "You can't get blood out of a turnip, especially when it's my turnip."
Thomas Carlyle, a century and a half ago, said something dear to my family and I think appropriate to Jay Monroe:
"Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toiled craftsman with that earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand ; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and they body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.
A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.
Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness."
Jay Monroe came about as close as we will see to the "peasant saint". Close to earth, proud of any gnarls, yet fixed on the world of ideas, truth, and learning.
Love is the central principle of all that we are. No spirit as strong as Jay Monroe dies. No mind as vital Jay Monroe's dies. What anticipation lies with the image of sitting with Jay Monroe in some celestial bleacher watching Joe Dimaggio, Charlie Keller, and Bill Dickey doing what they do best and discussing some point of surgery or politics with that trusty cowboy, doctor, father, and philosopher! Was he ever! Cowboy, doctor, father, and philosopher.
Thank you, Dear Lord, for sending Jay Monroe our way. May we now bring comfort to Bebe. Amen.
*Chase Nebeker Peterson was born in Logan, Utah. He attended Harvard University and Harvard Medical School. He completed residency training in endocrinology at Yale and practiced for several years at the Salt Lake Clinic. He returned to Cambridge with his wife, Grethe, and children (Erika, Stuart, and Edward) as Dean of Admissions of Harvard College. He later became Vice-President for Development. He left Harvard in 1978 to become Vice-President of Health Sciences at the University of Utah. In 1982, he became President of the University of Utah, a position he held with distinction for over a decade. He then returned as a faculty of the College of Medicine.
