Scholar Ray Fleming brings passion to FSU classroom

By Doug Blackburn
DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER

The seven graduate students were struggling to understand the rich nuances in "The Divine Comedy." It didn't help that they were reading Dante's epic early 14th century poem in its original Italian.

Their instructor, Ray Fleming, coaxed them from one verse to the next, encouraging the students to make the connections.

To illustrate a point, Fleming moved away from the edge of the desk on which he was sitting and stepped to the side of the room. His fists clenched, his eyes closed and his shoulders hunched, he recited a long passage from memory. It was a performance worthy of an opera house.

The students shared wide-eyed glances, a mixture of appreciation and amazement in their expressions. They knew they had just witnessed a vintage Fleming moment.

A distinguished professor in Florida State University's Department of Modern Languages, Raymond Fleming is a world-class Italian and German scholar with a passion for the classroom. Twelve of the past 15 years he has been nominated for outstanding teaching and advising awards.

"Dr. Fleming is a difficult professor by all means, but his desire for knowledge is so contagious," said Renata Redford, one of Fleming's graduate students this semester. "He's not just a great professor, he's the kind of professor you can admire as a human being."

It would be hard to find a faculty member at FSU who moves so seamlessly from one department to the next. An acclaimed poet, the 64-year-old Fleming has also taught courses and given lectures in African-American Studies, Humanities and at the Institute on Human Rights.

"It's just a matter of pursuing things I was interested in," he said. "I've never felt confined.

"The boundaries that are placed among disciplines are largely artificial."

Ironically, Fleming and his wife Nancy never expected to like Tallahassee when FSU lured him away from Penn State in 1995, where he was a tenured professor and graduate director of the Ph.D. program.

A native of inner-city Cleveland with an undergraduate degree from Notre Dame and a doctorate from Harvard, Fleming had learned first-hand to be wary of the South. He had been a student activist in the 1960s and had taken part in voter registration drives across the Southeast.

"I had some really horrendous experiences," Fleming recalled. "I was beaten up. The police pulled us over and roughed us up.

"I even got shot at twice. I got a bullet right by my ear."

That happened in Holly Springs, Miss.

To the Flemings' amazement, Tallahassee turned into more than another stop on his impressive resume. It became the interracial family's home, the city where they have lived the longest in their 39-year marriage.

"We've found something here we've never found anywhere else, and that is a kind of community where we can be comfortable," Fleming said. "It's the only place we consider home."

The Flemings and their three sons — all are in their 30s — had previously lived in California, Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania, not to mention a handful of countries in Europe.

"Tallahassee has something that's very different for the South, a tradition of enlightened conservatism," he said. "It's like no other university town or no other town of this size that I've gotten to know in my lifetime. It's most unusual."

"Self-made" is a cliche, but there's no better term to describe Fleming. His father was intellectually curious but chronically unemployed; his mother toiled as a domestic. By the time he was 12, Fleming was working three jobs and financially independent.

His parents separated when he was 14. Rather than live with one over the other, he purchased a bus ticket for Los Angeles and set out on his own.

He found an apartment, got a paper route to help make ends meet, and started attending Santa Monica High — where he flourished. He was a top student and captain of the football team. With the help of a mentor — John Francis Dugan, whose name Fleming now honors with his professorship at FSU — he was accepted at Notre Dame, the first member of his family to go to college.

Davis Houck, a professor in FSU's school of communications, marvels at Fleming, whom Houck met when he was a graduate student at Penn State.

"One of the things you learn about Ray really quickly is Ray never toots his own horn," Houck said. "When I was 14 I could barely find my way home, much less go on my own from Cleveland to Santa Monica."

Fleming, who had a brief tryout as a kicker with the San Diego Chargers when he was 24 years old, at one point seriously considered the priesthood. But he realized he craved a social life, too.

Now he is in his 40th year as a teacher. It seems the classroom is where Fleming was meant to be all along.

"I love my job," he said. "I just think it's the most incredible job to have."