Successive Approximation: GHP Hogwarts edition

This post is occasioned by the death last week of a Lichtenbergian, Michael Jenkins. He was a good friend and a brilliant educator, and we will miss him.

First, some background. The Georgia Governor’s Honors Program (GHP) is a state-funded summer residential program for gifted high school juniors and seniors. I attended as a student in 1970 and returned to the program as an instructor in 1984. From 1997–2009 I was the assistant program director for instruction (a summer position), and from 2011–2013 I was honored to be the full-time director. It is an amazing, life-changing experience for both the students and the faculty.

In 2006, Valdosta State University (where the program was hosted for over 35 years) needed to renovate the dining hall, and so our 700 students and 100 staff were fed in the Old Gym. It was not a winning gambit, but we survived.

The Old Gym was one of those with a stage at one end, and one day the assistant program director for residential life and I were having a leisurely lunch before the kids came pouring in. He looked at the rows and rows of tables set up, along with the onstage dais (where many of the faculty ate), and said, “You know what? This looks like the Great Hall in Hogwarts.”

His clever idea was for the faculty and RA staff to dress up like the residents of Hogwarts and surprise the kids one Saturday night for dinner. So I went back to the faculty dorm, whipped up a sign-in sheet, swore the faculty to secrecy, and set to work.

If you know anything about gifted people, it’s that if they are intrigued by an idea they will pounce on it and worry it to death with ideas and embellishments and improvements. And thus our GHP Hogwarts tradition was off to the races.

Michael was a member of the Social Studies department; he asked his wife to mail him his Renaissance Festival robes, and poof! he was Dumbledore. I had actually made a luxuriant cape/robe the previous Halloween to attend a party as Snape, so I snagged that role.

All in all we had 16 participants, most of whom threw together their costumes out of bits and pieces from thrift shops and bits and pieces.

It was a huge hit. The students went nuts at supper; most of us never got a meal, because we had to pose for photos the whole night. I learned, in subsequent years, to take advantage of Snape’s surliness (and my position as an administrator) to head straight through the serving line before submitting to the general amazement.

That first year was the summer of the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so Michael and I got a lot of requests for photos of the “Headmaster and his murderer.” Whatever.

Every year after that, the project got bigger and bigger, more and more elaborate. Faculty and staff planned ahead and brought more and more costumes. We made wands. We decorated the dining hall. We had banners for the houses. We had a Sorting Hat — and Georgia’s brightest teenagers lined up to be sorted.

And every summer, Georgia’s brightest teenagers became squealing, adoring 10-year-olds. “This is the best night of my life!” was a recurring phrase. One summer, a wand we had made in the dorm broke, so we took it with us. I snagged the first red-headed kid I saw, thrust it at him, and snarled, “Weasley, if you can’t keep track of your wand…” He flushed pink and immediately joined in.

So by year 7, this is what we looked like:

We had most of the characters, plus the founders of each house, plus the house ghosts!

Unfortunately, Michael’s health failed him that summer and he was hospitalized just as the program started. I whipped up the Headmaster’s portrait, and just like year 7 in the books our Dumbledore was there in spirit only, and I, the director of GHP for its 50th summer, finally achieved my goal of being Headmaster.

The point, Lichtenbergianism-speaking-wise, is that if we had sat around and talked about the idea and put off doing it until we had all our plans and all our costumes ready to roll, we would have missed seven years of amazing fun. Instead, we plunged in with our ABORTIVE ATTEMPT, and though it looks particularly cheesy in retrospect it was enough to spark the flame. We just kept coming back to it year after year with tweaks large and small. (As an example, as Snape I added the wig the second summer, but then contented myself with black slacks and shirt under the cape — until Michael showed up one summer with the dazzling blue robe his wife Sandra made for him. I went straight to my room, went online, and ordered a black cassock. I was not going to be shown up by Dumbledore.)

So imagine, if you will, that you’re a gifted teenager in the middle of the most life-changing experience you’ve had so far, and one Saturday evening as you’re on your way to dinner you come out of your dorm and see this:

Or this:

Or this:

DG (left) had never read the books nor seen the movies, but agreed to be our Voldemort. Then when he saw what everyone else was doing, he went online, did a little research, and promptly shaved his head and eyebrows.

At Michael’s memorial service yesterday, his family had a display of photos, and standing there in the middle of his life was his Dumbledore portrait.

Always.