Dr. Kenneth A. Locke
My home institution, University of the West — one of the small handful of accredited, Buddhist-founded universities in North America — suffered a devastating loss on April 12th, when Dr. Kenneth A. Locke, Dean of the Administration, former Chair of the Religious Studies Department, and WASC accreditation liaison, passed away after a long illness, at only 45 years of age.
An 11-year member of the faculty, Ken was vital to securing the accreditation of UWest, and supervised numerous master’s theses and doctoral dissertations for students. He was an Anglican theologian with a Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin, who was prolific in his field, writing numerous articles and a book, The Church in Anglican Theology: A Historical, Theological and Ecumenical Exploration. Devoted to inter-religious understanding, he was instrumental in launching the Master of Divinity in Buddhist Chaplaincy Program at University of the West, which I direct.
I was the Master of Ceremonies at Ken’s memorial service on UWest’s campus this past weekend, tasked with the opening remarks. Here’s what I said…
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Welcome. Welcome to this memorial for our dear departed Dr. Kenneth A. Locke. For most of us, he was our friend. For many, he was a beloved co-worker and supervisor. He was also a son. A brother. An uncle. A husband. And for all of us, he was a teacher.
Today we’re going to hear quite a bit about Ken from a wide variety of people in his life. I suspect that if there is going to be a common thread, it will have something to do with how he taught us. For me, my relationship with Ken is inexorably tied up in his role — his life — as a teacher. My name is Danny Fisher, and I’m the Coordinator of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Program here at UWest. Ken was my dear friend, boss, and mentor. He took a big chance on me and gave me my career. He believed in and always encouraged me. I stand before you as someone who owes just about everything to him. I stand before you as far from the only person in the room who feels this way about Ken.
We will remember his generosity. Ken taught generosity. He taught by example that being the best teacher — the best person — you can be means giving of yourself. He gave bounteously of himself. It occurs to me, for example, that, as far as he would have been concerned, I was in exactly the right place when I found out about his passing. I wasn’t at USC’s Keck Medical Center with his other friends and family, but at Cerritos College’s Inaugural Hall of Fame Dinner and Awards in Cerritos, CA. Among the historic first honorees were two people in our extended University of the West family: Dr. Edward Bloomfield (a thirty-five-year member of the Philosophy faculty at Cerritos, and a current, popular adjunct professor at UWest) and Mr. J.P. Wang (whose company GST, Inc., is a corporate partner at Cerritos, and who is personally a donor to the International Buddhist Education Fund, which has awarded over $1 million in scholarships for UWest students—including myself). That afternoon, I had hesitated about going to the ceremony: Ken was in risky surgery, and I felt strongly that I should be there. After checking in with his sister Vanessa, though, it seemed that things were going well, and off I went to Cerritos instead. During dinner I got the call: Ken had left us. I so wished I were at the hospital at that moment. But after a few more moments, it dawned on me: I have no doubt that Ken would have said, “No! Someone from UWest should be there to support and celebrate our friends Dr. Bloomfield and Mr. Wang on their special occasion.” That was who Ken was: someone who always — always — put others first.
We will remember how Ken’s generosity was manifest in all the ways — small and large — that he so loved and took care of those of us in the UWest community, and the other communities in which he found himself. He was the guy who picked up every check, gave money out of his own pocket when someone was in trouble, and never closed his office door. He listened. He noticed. He looked after. In my first year, when I worked longer hours than I should have, Ken (working into the evening himself) would show up at my office door and say, “Come on, I’m driving you home. It’s time to go home.” When I learned that this was non-negotiable, no matter the amount of tasks in front of me, I started to shut my door in anticipation of his visits. This only resulted in loud knocking, and Ken hollering, “I know you’re in there! Come out now! I’m taking you home!” He helped me find my way as a leader, but, more importantly, he was like my big brother.
We will remember that his generosity came with a lightness of a spirit. Ken loved to laugh. (As one of my colleagues said recently, the halls of campus are so very, terribly quiet now without that laughter.) He loved to joke and tease and be silly. He often put up the stern, serious front of the Trinity College dons he so deeply appreciated, but it only thinly concealed the warmth and humor underneath. When our students put thoughts and prayers online for him recently, one wrote, “We would come to your office, and you would look up and say, ‘Go away.’ But we always knew that that meant, ‘Come, come!’”
We will remember the extraordinary depth of his generosity. It was without territory. It never imposed. It was all-embracing. Ken was a Christian, but his life was devoted to assisting others in their own unique pursuits of meaning, whether they were Christian or not. What’s more, he himself derived such profound personal meaning by supporting his Buddhist students and colleagues, and Muslim family members, in their practice. This was enormously important to him in his own spirituality as a Christian. By virtue of being the Christian who made a Buddhist Chaplaincy program possible, he perfectly modeled the work of the chaplain: to love and support others just as they are, to help them become more who they are.
Finally, we will remember to pay Ken’s generosity forward. I think that for each of us this will mean something a little different. For me, this will mean trying my best to apply what I’ve learned from Ken — to try my best to be the kind of teacher for our students that he was. This is no mean feat, but that’s his legacy, I think. As I told his wife Huong and sister Vanessa recently, I had a dream about Ken the night before he died. In the dream, I was alone in the Keck Medical Center with him. He looked as he did the last time I saw him: in bed, connected to machines and various apparatuses. There was rain outside, but everything was silent. Then Ken turned, and, through the tubes down his throat, said simply, “Just love me.” Then I woke up suddenly.
I don’t know for certain what this meant, but I think that loving Ken will take more than just honoring him here today. It will mean aspiring to the example he set, following the path he showed — the way of generosity. In this way, Ken will always be with us.
There’s a prayer I like, and that I think Ken would have, that goes:
Sometimes in life when we lose someone we love and we don’t know what to do, we should just pray and worship: Thank you, Lord, for their lives, for their love, creativity, for their friendship, their good days and bad, for their happiness, for their anger, for everything they’ve brought into our lives. These are things we should say about each other always. If we did, life wouldn’t be half bad.
Let us remember Ken…