In Memoriam: My Brother Pete

I was five years old at the time and hardly knew my oldest brother Pete existed. I did not know his real name was Leon Sinclair, named after our Dad. Considering he was nineteen years older there was no time in which we grew up in the same house.

Pete was home for a short visit. He invited me to sit upon his knee on the couch as we read the Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall” together. He invited me to read as best I could, supplying whatever words I needed when I struggled. Then he asked me what I thought about the poem.

I probably said something no more than “I liked it.” Even that minimum response was not because I cared anything about the poem but because I liked sitting on my big brother’s lap. Undeterred, he then shared with me a bit of pertinent information, that water fractures rock when frozen.

“Hey!” I blurted out with my first “Eureka” moment ever. “It’s him! The man who wrote this! He doesn’t like walls!”

After the reading I distinctly remember us sharing a banana. Everything else faded from that memory, but Pete emerged larger than life. After that visit I did not see him again for quite awhile, but Pete’s legend grew in my mind, embellished by news of his first ascents, mountain rescues and Medal of Valor.

At one time I resolved to be a mountain climber, just like my oldest brother Pete. Then I became hooked on long distance hiking and our paths diverged. They intersected again when I helped to organize and teach two courses, one for college, one for high school, called “Frost’s New England.” Students hiked the entire Long Trail in Vermont while reading Frost poetry.

I do not read much poetry, but I have read all of Frost’s poems … several times. My favorites are “Hyla Brook” (We love the things we love for what they are), “Tuft of Flowers” (Men work together I said from the heart, whether we work together or apart) and, of course, “Mending Wall” (Something there is that doesn’t love a wall), each one a humanitarian missive elegantly phrased. With messages like these Frost might have become my favorite (only?) poet to read anyways, but a special memory made certain of that.

Frost’s most famous poem, “The Road Less Taken,” relates to my own chosen path. Pete and I have doctorates, but his degrees were in the humanities, leading to a path through academia. He loved poetry, medieval literature and virtually any written word that engaged the mind. My degrees were in sciences, on a path where experiences became the best venue for discovery. Only Frost poetry engages my mind similarly to Pete; I’ll be forever grateful to the memory for why that is so. After all, for two paths to diverge they were first the same path.

Oldest to Youngest: Pete, Ernie, Dave, Bob, Kirk

Pete passed away, after a long bout with Alzheimer’s, on November 28, 11:15 PST. He was a faculty member of Evergreen State College for much of his life, where they have posted their own In Memoriam for Pete.