by Amanda Davis
Erin Nichols ‘02 can’t quite describe Jonathan Raxter’s voice, but it was one
of her favorite things about him. It wasn’t twangy, she said, but distinctive
– smooth and Southern. She can still hear it in her head. “I can imagine him
saying anything.”
Lauren Flessner ‘04 can still hear Raxter too. “I loved to listen to him,” she said. “And it’s one of those voices that I can still hear, because I can still remember exactly what it sounded like, and I can’t imitate it, but…”
In the days since Raxter’s suicide last Friday, his friends have been talking about him. They have been recalling the parts of him they knew and trying to come to terms with the parts they didn’t. For many people who knew him well, as well as those who knew him casually, Jonathan’s voice is one thing that is very clear in their minds.
“He spoke very slowly and very clearly and when most people speak slowly, you get kind of impatient and you want them to wrap it up,” Shelly Mills ‘04 said, “but it wasn’t that way with him at all.”
In the closest any of his friends would come to hazarding an imitation of Raxter’s drawl, Louise Briguglio ‘04 told a story. “We were talking about people’s religious orientations, basically, and we were going around the room, and one person would say, I’m Catholic, I’m Jewish, blah blah blah, and Jonathan goes, ‘I’m three-quarters existentialist and one-quarter al-ca-holic,’” she said. “He had this kind of nasal Southern drawl, this way of dragging everything out.”
Raxter’s accent was a true North Carolina drawl. However, he also enjoyed sporting accents that were less than genuine. Rachael Dreyer ‘04 admired his British accent in particular. “He could keep it up all night,” she said. “He had this alter-ego, ‘Basil Babcock,’ to go with the accent.”
Raxter’s friends are quick to smile when they remember the characters he created. “He did a lot of interesting voices – one of my favorites was a devil voice,” Mills said, and slipped into a slimy, melodramatic and vaguely satanic imitation. “Don’t do your homework Shelly, watch Survivor . . .”
Liz Hulse ’02 recalls her and Jonathan’s imaginary discovery, in the Dibble laundry room, of the cause behind everyone’s disappearing socks: a green, slimy species of sock-eater they named the Munchies. “We rambled about them for hours that day and in the remaining weeks of the semester,” she said, “making up ridiculous lives for them that no one but the two of us could appreciate.”
Raxter’s humor was part of what put people at ease and one of the most memorable things about him, his friends said. “He helped me through so much just by making me laugh,” Hulse said. “Even if the two of us were in the midst of talking about how badly we felt, he could turn our sadness into silliness until the two of us were giggling uncontrollably.”
Despite and even within his humor, many friends say now that there was evidence of his problems with depression, but that it was hard to tell how deeply they ran because he didn’t talk about them much. “There was always an underlying sadness to him, but he always just joked,” one friend said.
“I just want to talk about the positive things because that’s the way I want to remember him, but he was kind of a sad person, you know,” Briguglio said. “Jonathan had this just sort of quiet, pervasive sadness, and I think it got overlooked. You almost just thought it was part of his character.”
It was also part of his character to cope by using humor. “He could always laugh about anything,” one friend said, “even if it was terrible stuff.”
Flessner disagreed. “He never laughed,” she said. “He always giggled.”
When Dreyer pictures Raxter in her mind, he is walking around, giggling. “Boys don’t giggle and he had a great giggle. It was wonderful,” she said. “It was just so gleeful. It was just genuine.”
“You could actually poke him and elicit a Pillsbury doughboy giggle,” Briguglio said. “He was very cute.”
His friends remember Jonathan as being as generous with his time and attention as he was with his humor. “He was the type of person who always had time to listen. No matter how much he had to do, he could set it all aside if he sensed you were down,” Hulse said.
He was the kind of person who drove everyone to Wal-mart even if he didn’t want to go, and who stopped by their rooms just to see if they were okay, his friends said. “I think he would do anything for someone else,” Nichols said. “I didn’t think about it that much until recently, but now it’s like, wow, he really was the most selfless guy.”
Raxter was “extremely intelligent, very funny, extremely accepting,” said Astrid Roll ‘04. “You could tell him anything and he would never think that you were bizarre. I’ve told him all sorts of horrible things about me and he didn’t think that they were weird or strange or sick.”
Emily Moore, Math, one of Raxter’s professors, also noticed his unusual compassion. “Jonathan was a gentle person. He was friendly and unusually sensitive to other’s feelings,” she said. “When he realized that the smoke on his jacket made me cough, he left his jacket on the bench outside my office when he came to see me.”
But Moore also knew that Raxter struggled with his classes. “He was not always able to concentrate on completing his mathematics assignments. I understand from his friends that he worked in spurts,” she said. “After his not having done some key assignments in my class, he did a beautiful job on the first exam in my course. What is remarkable is that without the benefit of comments on the assignments he had been able to master this material on his own.”
Although his depression made it difficult for Raxter to succeed academically, his professors saw his talent. “He struggled terribly with depression and he sought help and fought it bravely,” said Royce Wolf, Math, Raxter’s advisor. “He often had trouble completing work on time and attending classes, but when he was ‘on’ he overcame these difficulties, demonstrating a strong and active mind . . . He had a real, true talent for mathematics.”
One of the ways Raxter used this talent was to help other people. “I always thought something he could definitely do was be a math teacher,” one friend said. “When he would help us out with our math homework, he was really patient, good at explaining things.”
He really wanted a simple, quiet life, said John Bacino ‘05. “He wanted to be a math teacher, elementary I think,” he said.
His patience and compassion extended beyond homework. Raxter’s friends especially appreciated his sensitivity when they were getting acclimated to Grinnell. Flessner recalled getting to know Jonathan when he hung out in Rawson pit during their first year. “He was great because he could look at you for two minutes, practically, and you knew that he was looking at you and what you were going through, when no one else seemed to notice what was going on, because everyone gets really caught up on their own thing first year,” she said. “He was just a great listener.”
His friends remember him as being quiet, but having a lot to say. “He was so sweet. He was also really sensitive, and soft-spoken, but definitely not without his opinions,” Briguglio said. “He had this way of just slipping them in so dryly, and that was part of his sense of humor.”
However, his friends have thought since that they weren’t getting the whole picture. Talking to him, Nichols said, “you sort of got the feeling that he occasionally wouldn’t say everything that was on his mind.”
But one friend recalls the night she first met him, sitting in a lounge, talking and crying about family. “He said that his dad never taught him how to ride a bicycle,” she said. “I always figured someday he’d learn and that would be cathartic for him.”
Thinking about Raxter now has changed their perceptions, another friend said. “I sort of picture him in retrospect just unsatisfied with everything.”
Even though friends say that he didn’t talk about the future much, they see that Raxter could have been successful. “He wasn’t really forthright about it, but he was a good leader,” Mills said. “He was really good at organizing and taking control.”
Naturally, he had a certain style in his leadership. “He’d always book us hotels for Quizbowl and he would find the seediest places,” Mills said. “But we had way more fun in these rat traps than we would have in any nice place.”
Since his death, Raxter’s friends have come to appreciate more fully what he meant to the people around him. “What really strikes me now is the number of people that have stories about him, who have been really close to him,” Nichols said. “I think he really made an impact on a lot of people just by being an amazing guy and a really good friend.”
“He was the only person here that I felt like, whenever I saw him, I just wanted to give him a big hug,” Mills said. “I don’t know what it was.”
“He was one of those people you pass on the street and go, ‘Jonathan!’ as opposed to ‘Hey Jonathan,’” Briguglio said. “I don’t know if that explains his personality, but to me that does.”
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