Missing Big Jimmy
They are not normal human beings, these students at MIT. For starters, they are brilliant. They are driven. They are known to be socially challenged -- better acquainted with algorithms than altruism.
And they are subject to almost unimaginable pressures by professors who are simply older versions of themselves. Their lives are dominated by achingly complicated problems needing to be solved and success that must be achieved at any cost. It's a recipe, in too many cases, for disaster.
Which is where James Roberts fits in.
His nickname, ''Big Jimmy," immediately sets him apart from just about anyone else in that part of Cambridge. So does his weight, which his sister estimated yesterday at about 500 pounds -- ''most of it heart," she said.
His age: 59. His education: the old Boston Trade High School. His background: a Dorchester native who most recently lived with his 80-year-old mother in Brockton.
His impact on MIT: profound.
Big Jimmy Roberts was for 20 years a night watchman at an institution where a Nobel Prize is a standard success. But for each one of those years, for virtually every one of his rounds, he was something unfathomably more.
He was a soothing voice in the middle of the night at a time when thousands of quietly desperate students needed to hear one. He was a touchstone of normalcy in a sea of sterile formulas. He was a caring human being who could spin a great yarn and make a memorable crock of chili for students in dire need of a break.
Big Jimmy walked the dormitory halls every night from midnight until 8 a.m., often wheezing and sweating because of his weight. He always moved a lot slower than his bosses at MIT would have liked. He was never in any particular rush to get to the electronic checkpoints he was supposed to punch. He didn't much like sitting at the lobby desk where his superiors preferred him to stay.
He had more important business, namely the students who were up working one night after the next.
''He just had this glow," said James Harvey, a graduate student. ''When he stopped by, everyone listened."
There was the story he liked to tell about the student who made a hot tub out of a shower stall, until the water leaked through the floor and poured into a piano one story down. Or the students who built stronger and stronger catapults in the dormitory courtyard until they finally made one that could fling a pumpkin clear across the Charles River onto the Esplanade in Boston.
''He basically loved talking to everyone," said Zoz Brooks, a graduate student and adviser to undergraduates. ''He was the only guy who would talk to some people who were shy or had problems."
Oftentimes, he would quietly tip off graduate advisers to students who were drinking alone or who had confided some hardship. Many kids left their doors ajar hoping Big Jimmy would knock. They could hear him coming down the hall because he'd be lugging trash bags filled with cans he collected. When he cashed them in, he'd buy frozen pizzas for the students or ingredients for ''Jimmy Chili."
''He knew what students needed more than the administration," said Josh Lifton, a graduate student. ''They wanted to know that someone sincerely cared."
A couple of weeks ago, Big Jimmy fell ill at home, and on Jan. 21, he died in the hospital of cardiac arrest.
Big Jimmy's family wasn't expecting too much of a crowd at the memorial service they held. But then the students kept coming, and the workers at the Somerville funeral parlor kept pulling down one partition after the next and running for more chairs.
''You have these MIT kids who are going to be -- what? nuclear scientists? biologists? You name it," said Jean McKenzie, Big Jimmy's sister. She laughed through her tears and added, ''He couldn't be more different."
But the kids knew. They knew that MIT lost something huge the day Big Jimmy died.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.
