By Faisal Mohyuddin
Carleton College Class of 2000
April 2011

            My father woke me to share the shocking news.  Over the phone, he told me that a plane carrying Senator Paul Wellstone went down in northern Minnesota, and it was feared that he, his wife Sheila, daughter Marsha, and five others were killed—a fear that was confirmed not long afterwards.  At the time I was in graduate school, living in campus housing, and I had no television to turn on, so I stayed on the line as my father relayed the news coverage.  I remember staring out my window in disbelief, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and thinking of how strange it was that the drabness of that October day echoed the somberness of my father’s voice.  Yes, what had happened was without question an absolute tragedy, but what perplexed me was the extent of my father’s sadness.

            Two and a half years earlier, at my graduation from Carleton, my family members, who had arrived uncharacteristically early to get the best seats, found themselves sitting next to Senator Wellstone way up front.  Throughout the ceremony for the Class of 2000, he and my parents chatted off and on—an experience they still recall with great fondness and pride.  My mother remembers how warm and friendly he was, how eager he was to talk to anyone who approached him that afternoon.  Senator Wellstone taught at Carleton well before my time there, so I knew only of him; I possessed no experience that allowed me to know more about the kind of person he really was, to grasp why my father—after only one encounter—felt as if he had lost a close friend in the plane crash.

            It wasn’t until the MCAN Gathering of 2008 that I began to understand.  A few of my closest friends and I decided to attend a session commemorating the life and career of Senator Wellstone, in particular his time at Carleton.  Most of the people gathered in the big lecture hall in Olin were much older than we were, many of them former students of Senator Wellstone, and I remember feeling a little out of place.  Yet some impulse told me it was important and necessary for us to be there—for me to be in a position to learn more about this beloved man I never met but whose spirit lingered so strongly in so many people’s lives.

          For the next hour, my friends and I listened intently to alumni of color from the 70s and 80s, some from the 90s, share impassioned stories about Senator Wellstone.  His legendary status as a professor, we learned, was built upon countless acts of courage and kindness and scholarship, both in and out of the classroom.  One after another, alumni described the way he challenged them to always strive for excellence in all of life’s pursuits, inspired them to use the gift of a Carleton education to work to advance the rights of every human being, and charged them to never stop fighting to make the world a better, more just place.  Some talked about how, after the college had fired him, they organized protests that succeeded in getting Senator Wellstone rehired.  He had fought for the rights and needs of students and faculty of color, they said, and they knew he had earned their support in return.  Others just talked about more low-key moments in which he made them feel more at home at Carleton, more a part of the larger community of the college, more able to make a difference in the world.  The grief in the room, the sense of loss people felt, was without measure.  Even the most mundane interaction with Senator Wellstone, it seemed, gave a person good reason to miss him dearly.

          The more I heard, the more I could understand my father’s sorrow back in 2002—and the more I began to feel a kind of loss too.  But it wasn’t loss exactly; it was more like the feeling one has after missing out on something wonderful, exclusive, and unforgettable.  As I sat there in that room, I wished so badly that somehow I could have gotten to know Senator Wellstone too, so that I could now have my own stories to tell.  I remember raising my hand to share this sentiment—and, as I did, another emotion, a much more fitting one, bubbled up within me.  I felt a profound sense of gratitude towards all of the alumni in the room (as well as the countless more not present) who preceded my friends and me, all of whom, in their own special way, had helped mold Carleton into the dynamic, big-hearted, and unique place that it is. Their stories made me feel closer to Senator Wellstone—but, more than that, they connected me more directly to Carleton’s history, brought me closer to its tradition of excellence, made me prouder and more privileged than ever to be a Carl.

          Come this June, eleven years will have passed since I graduated, and during this time I have been fortunate enough to return to Carleton several times—to visit friends and former professors, to participate in a summer institute for teachers, and to attend my five- and ten-year Reunions as well as MCAN Gatherings, which I have been doing every four years since my freshman year in 1996.  Each visit has further bolstered my connection to the college and helped me appreciate what a special place Carleton truly is.  But what has made the Gatherings so unique and so meaningful is how extensively during that weekend alumni of color, regardless of class year, interact with one another—as well as with current students, faculty, and staff—in order to forge relationships that quite literally transcend time.  The impulse that brought me to Olin to commemorate the legacy of Senator Wellstone that day was an impulse to build new connections, to belong more completely to the Carleton family.

          Now, whenever my father brings up my graduation or talks about meeting Senator Wellstone, memories of the Gathering of 2008 flock to my mind, and I can’t help but think of the stories I heard that September as treasures passed on to me from a previous generation of Carls.  They are, in a way, a kind of inheritance that has enriched my life and inspired me to keep alive a noble tradition of service and scholarship.  Moreover, I have come to understand that I too possess a wealth of stories, not of Senator Wellstone per se but of the professors that I was blessed to learn from, who are too numerous to name, whose wisdom, kindness, and dedication will always guide me forward.  And there are so many other stories too.  By staying connected to Carleton, especially through MCAN, I know that these stories—my stories—will be little gifts I can pass on to future generations of students and alumni in an effort to keep us all connected, mutually inspired, and forever cognizant of how our own experiences of Carleton are shaped by—and an integral part of—a long continuum of hope, struggle, triumph, and self-discovery.

Faisal Mohyuddin ’00, is a high school English teacher in Highland Park, Illinois.  His writing has been featured on Chicago Public Radio and appeared in many publications, including in Poet Lore, Atlanta Review, Literary Laundry, and Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry.  The online journal Literary Laundry is currently showcasing a selection of his poems.