Wynn Martin was in my freshman orientation group at Will Rice College during August 1987. This was a sort of orientation week “small group” within one of Rice’s residential colleges (for those unfamiliar with Rice “O-Week”), so you might call Wynn part of my very first introduction to Rice. He made an immediate (positive) impression.
One of our first activities was to go to the house of a professor (in our case, from the physics department) for some sort of small group social event. Wynn made a number of jokes and clever remarks that day, and it made enough of an impression that I remember thinking at the time how much I was going to enjoy college if everyone had such a creative and playful mind. Few people were as creative or playful as Wynn, and so Wynn fell into the pantheon of a few select people who I thought made college much more colorful.
Funny little funny things that Winn would do stuck with me to this day and are part of a fond amalgam of memories from those days. I think everyone has mentioned his gravity defying leg, but at least in college he had a rubber slug (as in, the slimy cousin to a snail) that accompanied him everywhere in his shirt pocket, and he would find any excuse to pull it out on a moment’s notice.
When Winn was in charge of dinner announcements one year at Will Rice College, night after night he would announce that “sh*t on a stick was on the menu, lifting up a stick with a sign on it to that effect. Someone with a weak stomach eventually asked him to switch the menu description, but that was the sort of dinner announcement that Winn part of what I think about when I think about Rice.
Notwithstanding the potty jokes, he had a gentle sort of humor in that he did not wound or jab. The sort of gentle humor that seemed to make fun of himself, if anyone, but no one else.
I wrote for, and eventually helped run, a college publication called The Rice Sentinel that offered opinion pieces (usually more conservative in perspective), as well as satire and some humorous articles or features.
Winn did a piece for the publication that applied literary deconstructionism to Green Eggs & Ham, with the tone, technique, and vocabulary of what was then in vogue in academia circa the early 90’s. It was one of the funnier efforts in any of Sentinel issues.
But the humor in that particular article, though by definition illustrating the ad absurdum lengths that literary theory can take if unchecked, did not bite or sting but simply took joy in being silly. It took me years to understand the difference between humor that wounds and humor that heals, but it seemed that Winn always knew that humor should ease pain rather than cause it.
It is evident from the many comments to this web page that Winn healed pain in many people, and brought some joy to the world.
God bless you, Wynn.
--John (“Biff”) Clay
clay@bplaw.com
One of our first activities was to go to the house of a professor (in our case, from the physics department) for some sort of small group social event. Wynn made a number of jokes and clever remarks that day, and it made enough of an impression that I remember thinking at the time how much I was going to enjoy college if everyone had such a creative and playful mind. Few people were as creative or playful as Wynn, and so Wynn fell into the pantheon of a few select people who I thought made college much more colorful.
Funny little funny things that Winn would do stuck with me to this day and are part of a fond amalgam of memories from those days. I think everyone has mentioned his gravity defying leg, but at least in college he had a rubber slug (as in, the slimy cousin to a snail) that accompanied him everywhere in his shirt pocket, and he would find any excuse to pull it out on a moment’s notice.
When Winn was in charge of dinner announcements one year at Will Rice College, night after night he would announce that “sh*t on a stick was on the menu, lifting up a stick with a sign on it to that effect. Someone with a weak stomach eventually asked him to switch the menu description, but that was the sort of dinner announcement that Winn part of what I think about when I think about Rice.
Notwithstanding the potty jokes, he had a gentle sort of humor in that he did not wound or jab. The sort of gentle humor that seemed to make fun of himself, if anyone, but no one else.
I wrote for, and eventually helped run, a college publication called The Rice Sentinel that offered opinion pieces (usually more conservative in perspective), as well as satire and some humorous articles or features.
Winn did a piece for the publication that applied literary deconstructionism to Green Eggs & Ham, with the tone, technique, and vocabulary of what was then in vogue in academia circa the early 90’s. It was one of the funnier efforts in any of Sentinel issues.
But the humor in that particular article, though by definition illustrating the ad absurdum lengths that literary theory can take if unchecked, did not bite or sting but simply took joy in being silly. It took me years to understand the difference between humor that wounds and humor that heals, but it seemed that Winn always knew that humor should ease pain rather than cause it.
It is evident from the many comments to this web page that Winn healed pain in many people, and brought some joy to the world.
God bless you, Wynn.
--John (“Biff”) Clay
clay@bplaw.com
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