Whispering Pines

Spring Flowers

The journey of E. Gene Ramsey ’49 is a testament to resilience and an affirmation of life’s possibilities.

AN ENVELOPE ARRIVED at the College this spring containing a letter from Mary Lou Sprague (the granddaughter, daughter, sister, wife, and mother of Bowdoin alumni) and several clippings about the extraordinary life of family friend Earle Gene Ramsey ’49. It set in motion the story that follows.

Gene Ramsey was born in Wadesville, Indiana, and served as a first lieutenant in the 209th Combat Engineers in Burma during World War II. He later wrote about the greenness of the jungle that covered the hills on December 10, 1943, a scene that could only be repeated in his mind’s eye after 9:30 AM, when a grenade exploded during a training exercise. Ramsey lost both eyes and suffered severe injuries to his right hand and ears.

In an article in the December 16, 1950, issue of The Saturday Evening Post, Ramsey recounted the challenges and bouts of despair that accompanied multiple surgeries and the rehabilitation of mind, body, and spirit. The frank discussion of his journey in the piece, titled “Don’t Pity My Blindness,” no doubt helped combat-wounded soldiers from World War II and those being wounded in the Korean conflict, which was then in its sixth month. Gene learned to eat with his left hand, to shave himself, and to dance. After a dozen surgeries and skin grafts, he regained some use in his right hand. He learned Braille and touch-typing at the VA hospital, and he began to entertain thoughts of attending college on the GI Bill. One of Gene’s nurses introduced him to Julia Tompkins, and they were married six months later.

Not long after, Gene decided to apply to college. During his search, on his first college visit, he was told by that college’s staff that, despite his excellent grades in high school, they didn’t want him “stumbling around” the campus. The VA obtained an interview for Gene at Bowdoin, where dean Nathaniel Kendrick and admissions director Edward Hammond pledged to find a way for him to succeed. By the end of his first day at Bowdoin, they had secured an apartment across from the campus and had found readers among the student body for each of his courses. Fellow students and fraternity brothers helped Gene get to class on time; faculty were equally attentive to his circumstances. It took six to eight hours a day, seven days a week, to cover course readings and class notes. On the last day of classes in 1946, Gene typed two three-hour finals and went to Portland, where his daughter was born the next day. He was named a James Bowdoin Scholar after his first year.

Gene and Julia moved to a house in his senior year, where he learned to mow the lawn by using a twelve-foot-long two-by-four on the ground as a guide for each swath. He loved gardening and working around the house, although Julia’s eyes were required to let him know where he had missed a spot painting. He graduated magna cum laude, as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and as the winner of the Noyes Political Economy Prize, in 1949.

Gene entered the University of North Carolina School of Law, earning a JD in 1954. He established a law practice in Brevard, North Carolina, where he became a beloved member of the community for thirty-four years. His clients often forgot that he was blind, and he often said that one minor irritation was that there was another lawyer in Brevard with the name of “Ramsey,” so that he was sometimes referred to as “the blind Ramsey.” As a colleague once said, blindness was what happened to Gene, “the rest he could take credit for.”

Earle Gene Ramsey passed away on June 7, 1993, the anniversary of his wedding in 1945, his graduation from Bowdoin in 1949, and his graduation from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1954. Julia said, “He was very ill, but he got up part of every day, got dressed… and planted tomatoes in his garden.” In 2004 she wrote to Bowdoin that she couldn’t sell the house in Brevard “because so many of Gene’s daffodils and lily of the valley are still blooming.”

John R. Cross ’76 is secretary of development and college relations.