Dr Al Rodin (tribute)
Dr Al Rodin, or, How I Learned to Stop Ignoring, and Love ACD is an article written by Greg Sullivan published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 9, june 1999).
This article is a personal tribute to Dr. Al Rodin, highlighting his friendship, personality, and influence on Arthur Conan Doyle scholarship. It especially emphasizes Rodin's commitment to factual research, including his work challenging the idea that Conan Doyle was a failed doctor.
Dr Al Rodin
Author's Note: This essay is a personal reminiscence and makes no attempt to address the larger issue of Dr Al Rodin's tremendous effect on Conan Doyle scholarship.
I first met Dr Alvin E. Rodin in September 1992. It's odd, when I think back and do the mathematics, to find that I only knew him for six and a half short years. For the last two and a half years we have not lived within 1000 miles of each other, so I was only able to see him two or three times and converse on the phone maybe a dozen times. The result of this 'sum' is that my memory of my close friendship with Al Rodin really covers only four years. I find that astonishing. I guess the wisdom to take from this is that it does not take much time to have an enormous effect on someone else's life.
I met Al, not because of Sherlock Holmes or Conan Doyle, but because of community theatre. I was appearing in a local production of The Rainmaker and a Saturday had been allotted to set building. I arrived early and Al was already there, waiting for the doors to be opened. I'm not much of a 'walk up to people you don't know and start talking' type of person, but Al sure was. He came up and immediately started chatting and being friendly. I was impressed with his energy and enthusiasm for the theatre. (An aside for those of you not familiar with community theatre. The older generation of people involved with community theatre usually is made up of men and women with no energy, who love to be in charge, but spend most of their time bemoaning that nothing can be done. and boy wasn't that a great production of Top Hat in '58, and then lobby to perform Arsenic and Old Lace and Carousel again next year.) Al was as open to new ideas as he was to preserving old wisdom. Even if choices were made concerning the show that he did not agree with, he still provided hard work and enthusiasm for the project. My wife and I were so charmed that we invited him to dinner that night. He came; he broke a wineglass; and I found a new friend.
Al was a man of enthusiasms, and I have to admit that I am similar to him in that respect. If Al liked something he really loved it. If he disliked it, it came in for some pointed criticism. Although our enthusiasms often overlapped, it was most interesting when they did not. These 'disagreements' (hell, call them what they were: 'fights') could be loud and long, but at the end, our friendship was intact and my mind was sharpened by contending with his. We often had disagreements on theatre, but I found that there was a subject upon which we agreed almost entirely; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I came to Holmes and Doyle much later in life than most. enthusiasts I have met. I was twenty-two when I first saw Granada's The Red-Headed League' and 'The Final Problem'. This lead to searching out the original stories by ACD. After reading a good chunk of the Holmes stories, I became intrigued by Doyle himself. Luckily, at this time a new printing of The Lost World and The Poison Belt came out and I got to read two wonderful Professor Challenger stories. Shortly after this, a book called Conan Doyle and the Spirits was published, revealing a whole new area of ACD's interests to me. I believe I had read one of the ACD biographies at this point, but it was not a very good one. I enjoyed the Holmes stories, was interested in Doyle biographically, and wanted to find out more about his other interests. I had a little knowledge of Sherlockian scholarship and no knowledge of Doylean scholarship. It was in this state that I met Al Rodin.
Although I figured that I knew more than most about ACD, talking with Al showed me how little I did know. Shortly after we met, Al gave a lecture with slides at the Dayton Public Library. The topic was ACD and Spiritualism. After a talk of about an hour and a half, I knew more about ACD and his Spiritualist beliefs than I had learnt from the entire book Conan Doyle and the Spirits. Impressively, Al's talk was loaded with facts and details, without feeling the need to either defend or debunk ACD's beliefs. I would bet both Doyle and Houdini could have sat through that lecture without taking any offence. Advocacy was the last thing on Al's mind. He was simply interested in spreading the truth about ACD.
As I got to know Al better, I came to understand that this was a central point in his enthusiasm for ACD. Most of the things that the general public considers 'common knowledge' about ACD are wrong. Al felt it important to check the facts and report back. I know I'm glad he did, because I don't know if there was anyone else who would have done so in quite the same way. I must admit now, that while I'm praising Al, I have no wish to denigrate or reduce the importance of the contributions of Al's long time collaborator Jack Key. I only met Mr Key once, long enough to shake hands and say hello. When Al would reminisce about his researches, he would often use the term 'we', but I have had no opportunity to discuss the collaboration with Mr Key. My only hope for this reminiscence, is to share Al's thoughts and impressions and their impact upon me. I make no claim that Al achieved all his accomplishments alone. We owe Jack Key much thanks as well.
One of the most annoying things about Al Rodin was his inability to take things on faith. His mind was always questioning. This became maddening when he began to have trouble with his memory. I particularly remember driving with Al to Canada and being asked repeatedly, 'What's the next turn?... What's the name of the road we're looking for? ... Which highway are we taking? Not that I minded telling Al these things, but unfortunately he would forget what I had told him and five minutes later would be asking the same question again. 'Why can't he accept that I know the way and will get us there?' I thought to myself. It took some time and a lot of frustration before I realized that this aspect of his personality, which was exasperating me so much, was also what made him such a good scholar.
This relentlessness is obviously what lead Al to what I consider his (and Jack Key's) greatest achievement: The discovery that Arthur Conan Doyle was not a 'failure' as a doctor. The inaccurate perception of Doyle as a failure at medicine was particularly pernicious because Doyle himself contributed to it. In his autobiography and in other writings, he referred to sitting in his surgery awaiting patients that never came. So for about fifty years. that was that. Straight from the horse's mouth; Doyle was an unsuccessful doctor. But the infuriatingly stubborn Al Rodin thought 'Well let's just see how unsuccessful he was'. He arranged a trip to England and sought out records from Doyle's medical career. Al was able to determine approximately what ACD's income was at the time, then compared it to that of his contemporaries in the medical profession. Al's discovery was that while Doyle was by no means a highly-paid doctor, he made an average living for a medical man at that time. I'm sure to Doyle the great success of his writing career made his medical career feel like a failure; but Al and Jack Key proved otherwise.
I often marvelled at what would cause Al to even consider the subject of ACD's medical career. I mean, the man was a great writer, and he created Sherlock Holmes, arguably one of the best known fictional characters of all time. Who cares if he was a bad doctor or only an average one? Well, Al cared. Al cared because there was a discoverable truth that no one else sought. It wasn't because he wanted to prove others wrong or to improve his reputation — he was just curious and he had the ability to find out.
Another aspect which made Al unique in the world of ACD and Holmes scholarship was his fascination with Doyle himself. Al was an investitured Baker Street Irregular and wrote about the Holmes stories, but unlike many of us who are mainly interested in the writing, Al was fascinated by ACD the man. In an appearance on a local news program to promote the Annual Dayton SH/ACD Symposium, Al once said: 'Although I enjoyed the stories, I was fascinated by the man himself.' During our many discussions, I was never able to pinpoint what it was that pulled Al to ACD, but he was equally interested in all aspects of the man. His enthusiasm for ACD was omnivorous. I remember during the above mentioned TV appearance the caption the news crew used to identify Al was 'Dr Al Rodin-Sherlock Holmes Fan'. I was annoyed by the obvious condescension inherent in such a label: they could have at least called him a Sherlock Holmes Scholar, I thought, but then decided that even that would be inaccurate. Sherlock Holmes was a sub-set of his scholarship. Arthur Conan Doyle was the focus. Even the word 'fan' would have been fitting for Al if it had been connected with ACD. Although Al could discuss the Holmes stories with knowledge, intelligence, and wit, his eyes lit up more and his speech became more enthusiastic when discussing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I'm proud to say that Al hand-picked me to be his successor in running the Annual Dayton Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle symposium. I don't know what his reasons were, but whether he knew it or not, he has succeeded in creating a younger version of himself (at least as far as enthusiasm is concerned). I cannot claim to match Al's interest in every aspect of ACD, but I have certainly learned the value of discovering as much as I can about it all. Although I will continue to produce a symposium that I hope Al will be proud of, I hope even more they will be events that he would find interesting and fun.
Al Rodin died of complications due to Alzheimer's in March of this year. I miss him a lot. Although intellectually when I think of Al, I think of the above, there are many non-ACD-related memories that I miss as well. Among them:
Book Hunting: Al and I were both book collectors. He helped me amass my ACD and Holmes library, by recommending books and dismissing others. Of course the main fun, as with any pair of collectors, was the unstated competition of trying to find something new that the other did not have-although pitting my library against Al's made this task nearly impossible, I did come out on top once or twice.
Towards the end of our book hunting career, it often fell to me to remind Al that he already owned a book that he was about to purchase. At first I thought this was just the result of owning such a large library, but of course it was the beginning of the disease that would ultimately kill him. What was especially odd, given the 'let me prove it to myself' aspect of his personality, was that he deferred to my judgment on whether or not he already owned a book. I often think of this when called upon to act a character that I don't find 'consistent'. Sometimes people aren't.
Star Trek: Al was a big Star Trek fan. I don't know if this lost him respect with some people, but it was fine with me, because I am too. Al particularly liked discussing Star Trek as theatre. We would pick apart performances, scripts, costumes, and makeup. I wish Al had been able to see the video presentation I put together proving that Mr Spock is a descendant of Sherlock Holmes. It was inspired in large part by my discussions with him.
The Theatre: Al loved the theatre. He liked watching it, producing it, directing it, and acting in it. I'm the same way. We worked together on many productions for Dayton community theatre as well as reader's theatre for the SH/ACD Symposium. Al and I disagreed on many aspects of production and performances. We had arguments, discussions, and debates. We were both insistent because theatre is important to both of us. Who won? When Al was directing, he won. When I was directing, I won. That's the way it is in the theatre. You can make suggestions and argue your point, but the director must have the last word. Both of us knew that from having seen too many shows that were awful because the people involved didn't know that.
Al was also a big ham. I first saw this when attending his ACD Spiritualism lecture. Any time he was reading a quotation from ACD he would affect a slight Scottish brogue. It was very effective. Later I was directing Al in a show and discovered that he was using the same voice. It worked okay so I didn't say anything. By seeing Al in several other pieces, I realized that this was Al's acting' voice. No matter what part he played, that was the voice he used. He would attack a part with gusto. No matter how small or large the part was, Al was at every rehearsal, ready to go.
One of the illusions (or is it a belief?) that I use to comfort myself when thinking of Al Rodin is a scene of him walking with Arthur Conan Doyle in the great beyond. Through a lively discussion, Al is learning everything he ever wanted to know about ACD. But ACD wants information from Al. He wants to know why those of us who love Al will continue to spend so much time studying and trying to understand ACD. And Al tells him. I don't know what Al says, but it makes sense and is the truth. Maybe in his explanation to ACD, he will quote something I said at one time or another. And it will probably be in a Scottish accent.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
