A right to learn for learning's sake

By Carl Mollins

The basic mood and spirit that coloured the 70-plus years of Walter Whitfield Mollins, and shaped the gifts of living he spread to so many others, began on the day of his birth in Ottawa.

This writer, his brother, remembers that day near the end of May--a Friday, May 29, 1936, a few weeks before my fifth birthday. Our father came home from the hospital, where our mother had gone for reasons I really didn’t understand. He skipped up the stairs, singing in his musical baritone the announcement to me and my two older sisters that a baby boy had joined the family.

It was pure happiness.

Walt became the life of the family. As well, in reversal of the customary case of the kid brother copying his big brother, Walt in many ways was a model for me.

It was noted, for one thing, that we shared a mutual aversion to shaving. Even in that, Walt’s beard sparked the happier reactions: Folk sometimes compared me to Karl Marx, whereas youngsters often took Walt for Santa Claus.

His sense of humour, pursuit of happiness, his encouragement of that spirit in others, persisted throughout his life and into its final days.

PLAYFUL CHILD BECOMES CULTURED ADULT

His positive mind and manner persevered despite his struggle against the depressive diabetes that struck in early childhood and governed him physically ever after.

In fact, with the diabetic’s need to maintain a balance among daily intakes of insulin and food with exercise, he indulged at an early age in fun and games as a means of burning off excess calories. Many were the laughter-fuelled sessions of skip-rope or hopscotch, of climbing a slippery poplar or, in winter, playing two-person hockey on the home-made backyard rink.



The fun and games contributed in turn to Walter’s active life of happily “doing things,” be it at the piano or with his violin, his paintbrush portraying a landscape, his pen composing a poem, or singing in choirs that toured at home and abroad. Then there was helping Ruffles the dog through a tricks routine.

A good part of the rest of his waking hours would be engaged in fundraising campaigns for charities and performing volunteer services to the community. The most important part of that included his active assistance for the financially or physically or mentally deprived.

LIFE-LONG TEACHER AND VOLUNTEER

Such activity took place both during and following his career as a schoolteacher, an instructor who loved children and worked to help them develop happy lives. Most of his public school efforts consisted of teaching pupils with special needs.

For such pupils, as well as people he later taught voluntarily outside schools, he sought to get them involved, as he was, in the stimulation and enjoyment of participation in the riches of life. In his marriage, he and wife, as a nurse, became a formidable team in caring for underprivileged and ailing neighbours.



Walter not long ago gave voice to his purposes in life in an article by a niece about teaching illiterate people, a project they both pursued. After observing him teaching in Stratford and talking to him about it, she wrote:

“Walter Mollins is working from a belief that everybody has a right to learn for learning’s sake--for the sense of pride, accomplishment and connection that brings, not for any other goal. As he says, everyone has a right to develop a sense of conscious growth . . .

“His approach is to respect and honour people for what they can do. He does not assess based on what they cannot do and try to fill in the gaps. He assesses what they can do and tries to strengthen that and build on it.”

Walter Mollins, in an echo of the day of his birth, thus brought happiness to many people as well as himself and his family. In so doing, he left a great legacy: the hundreds of lives that he enriched in his time. ~

This is a tribute originally given by my father at my uncle's funeral.