At a joint meeting of the Council for Clinical Training (CCT) and the institute of Pastoral Care (IPC) was held in Miami, Florida, October 18-22, 1965. Anton Boisen had recently died, on October 1. Princeton Seminary professor Seward Hiltner gave the keynote address, entitled "The Debt of Clinical Pastoral Education to Anton T. Boisen." In that address Hiltner made the following comment:
"...it will be a few years hence when a meeting like this will find no one who ever shook hands with Anton Boisen."
Hiltner was in many respects prescient. He did not miss much. But he missed this one. Those 'few years' have now become fifty years.
At the previous year's joint meeting of the CCT and IPC, in 1964, our own George Buck was certified as a Clinical Pastoral Supervisor by the CCT. The meeting was held at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. This was three years prior to the creation of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education in 1967. Boisen was rather frail by that point, with less than a year to live. He was living gratis at Elgin State Hospital nearby, in a hovel off the hospital kitchen, with no door, and he appeared on at least one day of the Council's meeting. That seems to have been his last appearance at any gathering of his many hundreds of protégées.
At that meeting George Buck was standing in conversation with Tom Klink, his training supervisor, when Boisen came over to greet Klink, who in turn introduced George to Boisen. After shaking hands Boisen turned and left, and Klink, according to George, said, "That's the way he is." Boisen with his flat affect was known to be not much given to socializing, which illustrates the fact that one does not have to be 'a hail fellow well met' to have a major impact on history.
It seems unlikely that anyone else is now alive who attended that Chicago meeting and might have shaken the hand of Boisen. If there is, please pass on to us that information.
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