So I wanted to say a couple words about Tim Capps as we start to move into this Derby week, a time that's always been so important and close to the hearts of the students in the EIP.
I wasn't as close to Tim Capps as many, in fact I only had one class under his instruction and he wasn't even the full time professor of the class, but that hardly means I'm without amazing memories of him.
When I started at UofL I was extremely intimidated. I had come from Brown School, which had been the size of a Match box, to JCTC, the size of a shoe box, to suddenly UofL; a comparative outlet store whose maps were in a different language. When I transitioned into the Equine Business program from Biology I started to finally settle in. I was surrounded by more like minded people, who remained contained in their own little culture away from the school.
Even in the Equine Business program there's a certain roughness that's carried in on the tattered sleeves and the boots of the students who enroll therein. Farmer tans covered up by tucked in button downs and shavings littered in the bottom of brief cases. There's a glint in their eyes that comes less from wading with the sharks and more from biting the dust and getting back up maybe one more time than was entirely healthy. It's eager tenacity to succeed and do and apply under the weight of long nights, aching muscles, and never enough sleep.
When I first saw Tim Capps it was during my first day of class at UofL, in my first Equine class. He was dressed ready for business head to toe, polished shoes, jacket and tie, belt properly adjusted. He was well groomed and well postured and the lines of his face drew taught in a way that reinforced the intensity of his gaze. I remember feeling a bit nervous, a thought I laugh about often now, worrying while looking up at this professor that maybe I wasn't cut quite clean enough, or maybe I wasn't quite stitched in the same places I needed to be to reflect this major. He was the head of the department, tailored and groomed and I was patchwork and purple hair and oversized, dirty, boots.
But as I spent time in the department I realized Tim Capps was the essence of who we were. He was clever and witty, humerus, engaging and amicable, but sill with a bit of sharpness that underneath it all radiated ability, work ethic, and skill. He was so, so very funny, and he could exchange sarcasm and quips without a seconds hesitation. He always had something witty to say, some way to turn a lifetime of experience and admirability into something that we could all relate to and hold like a personal gift. Tim Capps was the kind of man that would sit in a room with tired twenty and teen something's, who were hungry and poor and cranky and he'd make every single one of them smile and laugh and trudge to the next class a little lighter and a little more determined than they had been before.
What I most loved about Capps was how he interacted with us. With me, with my friends, with the faculty. I have friends who did so much more, who he was so supportive and proud of, and listening to them talk about his aid always made me envious.
But despite not being one of his regular students that hardly meant we didn't get to have our own moments. There was something about Capps that always fueled the inner fire of my obtuseness. He always had a way of igniting that part of myself that was so true to who I really was, and who my friends were. Inquisitive, nosey, scandalous, loud, obscene, colorful and always involved in something, constantly bending the bar of "can they do that?" With little concern of whether or not it would break. Something in the way he spoke and carried himself always seemed to push you to be more of yourself, dared you to take all the little pieces of your person you kept swept under the rug and put them out on the shelf glorious display. Capps had a way of daring us all to be as much of ourselves as we could be, because he believed that's how we lived best-- truthfully.
I remember at least one time I had nothing better to do and came to one of his smaller classes my other friends were in. It was more than halfway through the year, beyond a point where I'd even have an inkling of understanding of the material. But still I came and he teased me some and gave me the lecture notes, and happily taught the class with me there because what kind of teacher would he have been to deny someone a chance to learn? He had this fantastic way of letting people's personalities fill a room and press the walls to the point where it would drive others mad, with a supportive thumbs up and an appreciative nod of the head.
Because Tim Capps knew that sometimes people with rough pasts, or rough presents, or pajama pants, or purple hair, or dirty boots, or obscene mouths could be smart, and capable, and beautiful, and driven. He took that roughness that sat in all of us and asked it to live uncaged, because he knew that even under all that mud, and dirt, and obscenity we were all so so capable, and it only pushed us to prove that point time and time again. He took the linear and seamless ties of the business world and dared us each to tear the paper apart, paint it chartreuse and create a beautiful piece of art from its remnants.
"Are you causing trouble?" Was the question he always asked of me, no matter where we were or what the event. Less questioned and more pushed and pleaded, and when I'd easily reply I was managing to behave myself he might sigh or roll his eyes or admit "I was expecting you'd start dancing on the tables soon." I remember one time sitting in the Equine lab, exhausted, barely upright, narcoleptic as shit, and he suggested I use the conference room to spread out on the floor and sleep because it would be "a lot more comfortable" and I "wouldn't be bothered by anyone." Similarly there was a time where he managed to walk in on my friends and myself in that same conference room, my back turned to the door, hurling some unprofesssiknal non-Christian words, and just as easily as he came in without another word he nodded and quietly left. He was so beautifully, wonderfully human, and when we were with him the students felt that underneath all the stress and chaos of school, they were too.
Tim Capps will forever live on in my memory as a shining beacon of possibility. I will always proudly carry with myself a sense of duty to be exactly who and what I am and to do so without a word of fear or apology because who I am will never ever dampen my ability. Tim Capps left with me the knowledge that a suit and a tie and being well groomed should never snuff the inner flame of mischievous, Wiley adventure. He taught us that being someone who can be in business and be successful and capeable will never be worth nor necessitate losing ourselves and becoming soulless. Had the EIP been a day care of exceptional children we were coloring on the blank desolate walls with crayons he had eagerly and willingly placed in our hands.
So thank you, Tim Capps, for being a pusher of authenticity. Thank you for taking us, weird little misfits as we were, and proudly putting us in front of the world, backed by your name, to make us into more than we maybe ever thought we'd be capable of.
And I promise, in your name, for years to come, I will never stop causing trouble.
Thank you.
