Bandung, Saco-Indonesia.com - Hermain Tjiknang (91) mengikuti prosesi wisuda menggunakan kursi roda di Graha Sanusi Universitas Padjadjaran, Jalan Dipati Ukur, Bandung, Selasa (4/2/2014) lalu. Peraih gelar doktor Ilmu Hukum kelahiran Muntok, Bangka, 26 Juni 1922 ini tercatat sebagai wisudawan tertua.

Tentu, sosok Hermain Tjiknang menjadi sorotan dan tidak sedikit hadirin yang berdecak kagum untuk wisudawan lulusan gelombang II Unpad Tahun Akademik 2013/2014 itu.

Bukan karena saat wisuda Hermain menggunakan kursi roda, tapi ketika tahu bahwa usia Hermain sudah mencapai 91 tahun lebih 7 bulan.

Ya, Hermain memang menjadi wisudawan paling tua, namun semangatnya terlihat saat ia ditanya oleh wisudawan lain.
Sebelumnya tercatat, Mooryati Soedibyo adalah peraih gelar doktor tertua di Indonesia menurut Museum Rekor Dunia-Indonesia (Muri) ketika lulus S3 dari Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Indonesia pada tahun 2007.

Di Unpad, pada wisuda tahun 2010, Siti Maryam Salahuddin juga meraih gelar doktor pada usia 83 tahun. Melihat catatan tersebut, bisa jadi Hermain adalah peraih gelar doktor tertua di Indonesia saat ini.

Bukanlah hal mudah bagi Hermain yang di usia 90 tahun harus menyelesaikan disertasi. Bahkan disertasinya yang berjudul "Perlindungan Hukum Atas Pekerja Alih Daya (Outsourcing) Berdasarkan Keadilan dalam Perselisihan Hubungan Industrial Akibat Pemutusan Hubungan Kerja Sepihak", sampai tujuh kali direvisi oleh promotornya.

Namun karena semangatnya, dia berhasil menyelesaikan program Doktornya dalam waktu lima tahun.

"Sebenarnya banyak kendala, tapi karena saya memang ingin mempertahankan disertasi ini, akhirnya selesai juga," katanya ditemui seusai wisuda.

Tak terbatas usiaMenurut lelaki yang masih aktif bertugas sebagai dosen di STIH Pertiba, Pangkalpinang ini, menuntut ilmu tidak terbatas usia. Selagi keinginan masih ada, usia bukanlah halangan untuk memperdalam ilmu.

Terlebih sebagai dosen, ia merasa sudah kewajibannya untuk mendapatkan ilmu lebih banyak untuk dibagi kepada mahasiswanya.

"Usia boleh tua, tapi belajar tidak ada batasan," kata lelaki yang meraih gelar Doktor pada Sidang Terbuka Promosi Doktor pada 17 Januari 2014 lalu ini.

Karena masih ingin membagi ilmu inilah, Hermain masih menyempatkan datang ke kampus untuk mengajar Ilmu Hukum untuk mahasiswa sarjana dan magister. Tiga kali dalam seminggu, ia mengajar di perguruan tinggi yang juga didirikan oleh Hermain bersama rekan-rekannya di tahun 1982 tersebut.

Merasakan masih haus akan ilmu jugalah, yang membulatkan tekadnya untuk mengambil doktor Ilmu Hukum di Unpad. Ia harus berkuliah hingga menyeberang pulau karena ia bersama keluarga telah menetap di Bangka.

"Saya sudah cinta dengan dunia pendidikan," kata lelaki asal Palembang ini.

Stres
Sakit jantung yang dialaminya itu sempat pula membuatnya harus  masuk intensive care unit (ICU) rumah sakit saat dia tengah menyusun disertasi. "Gara-gara stres karena flash disk naskahnya dikira hilang," kata putri sulungnya, Suzanna Indrawati.

Beruntung, ternyata data itu ternyata berada di tangan asistennya.

Kecintaannya terhadap dunia pendidikan sudah ditunjukkan saat masa penjajahan Belanda. Ia sempat mengajar pejuang-pejuang. Bagi Hermain, dengan pendidikan, Indonesia bisa menjadi negara merdeka dan maju.

"Pendidikan, mencari ilmu itu harus. Apalagi buat generasi muda, agar Indonesia maju," kata suami dari Federika Henderika dan ayah dari lima anak ini.

Ia mengaku sedih bila ada generasi muda yang tidak semangat bersekolah. Karena saat ini ia melihat menuntut ilmu jauh lebih baik dan lebih mudah. Dengan kemajuan teknologi, seharusnya generasi muda semakin bersemangat.

BanggaYashinta, anak Hermain yang menemani wisuda ayahnya mengaku bangga. Meski terkadang ia tidak tega melihat ayahnya menyusun disertasi hingga larut malam.

"Ayah saya sudah tua, tapi sampai malam masih nyusun disertasinya, kadang suruh istirahat, nanti dulu katanya, karena pengen cepat selesai," katanya. 

Ia juga tidak bisa menahan keinginan ayahnya yang masih ingin terus mengajar. Karena ia sudah memahami karakter ayahnya yang sudah mencintai dunia pendidikan.

Sumber :kompas.com

Editor : Maulana Lee

GREENWICH, Conn. — Mago is in the bedroom. You can go in.

The big man lies on a hospital bed with his bare feet scraping its bottom rail. His head is propped on a scarlet pillow, the left temple dented, the right side paralyzed. His dark hair is kept just long enough to conceal the scars.

The occasional sounds he makes are understood only by his wife, but he still has that punctuating left hand. In slow motion, the fingers curl and close. A thumbs-up greeting.

Hello, Mago.

This is Magomed Abdusalamov, 34, also known as the Russian Tyson, also known as Mago. He is a former heavyweight boxer who scored four knockouts and 14 technical knockouts in his first 18 professional fights. He preferred to stand between rounds. Sitting conveyed weakness.

But Mago lost his 19th fight, his big chance, at the packed Theater at Madison Square Garden in November 2013. His 19th decision, and his last.

Now here he is, in a small bedroom in a working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, in a modest house his family rents cheap from a devoted friend. The air-pressure machine for his mattress hums like an expectant crowd.

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Today is like any other day, except for those days when he is hurried in crisis to the hospital. Every three hours during the night, his slight wife, Bakanay, 28, has risen to turn his 6-foot-3 body — 210 pounds of dead weight. It has to be done. Infections of the gaping bedsore above his tailbone have nearly killed him.

Then, with the help of a young caretaker, Baka has gotten two of their daughters off to elementary school and settled down the toddler. Yes, Mago and Baka are blessed with all girls, but they had also hoped for a son someday.

They feed Mago as they clean him; it’s easier that way. For breakfast, which comes with a side of crushed antiseizure pills, he likes oatmeal with a squirt of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But even oatmeal must be puréed and fed to him by spoon.

He opens his mouth to indicate more, the way a baby does. But his paralysis has made everything a choking hazard. His water needs a stirring of powdered food thickener, and still he chokes — eh-eh-eh — as he tries to cough up what will not go down.

Mago used to drink only water. No alcohol. Not even soda. A sip of juice would be as far as he dared. Now even water betrays him.

With the caretaker’s help, Baka uses a washcloth and soap to clean his body and shampoo his hair. How handsome still, she has thought. Sometimes, in the night, she leaves the bedroom to watch old videos, just to hear again his voice in the fullness of life. She cries, wipes her eyes and returns, feigning happiness. Mago must never see her sad.

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When Baka finishes, Mago is cleanshaven and fresh down to his trimmed and filed toenails. “I want him to look good,” she says.

Theirs was an arranged Muslim marriage in Makhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan. He was 23, she was 18 and their future hinged on boxing. Sometimes they would shadowbox in love, her David to his Goliath. You are so strong, he would tell her.

His father once told him he could either be a bandit or an athlete, but if he chose banditry, “I will kill you.” This paternal advice, Mago later told The Ventura County Reporter, “made it a very easy decision for me.”

Mago won against mediocre competition, in Moscow and Hollywood, Fla., in Las Vegas and Johnstown, Pa. He was knocked down only once, and even then, it surprised more than hurt. He scored a technical knockout in the next round.

It all led up to this: the undercard at the Garden, Mike Perez vs. Magomed Abdusalamov, 10 rounds, on HBO. A win, he believed, would improve his chances of taking on the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who sat in the crowd of 4,600 with his fiancée, the actress Hayden Panettiere, watching.

Wearing black-and-red trunks and a green mouth guard, Mago went to work. But in the first round, a hard forearm to his left cheek rocked him. At the bell, he returned to his corner, and this time, he sat down. “I think it’s broken,” he repeatedly said in Russian.

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Maybe at that point, somebody — the referee, the ringside doctors, his handlers — should have stopped the fight, under a guiding principle: better one punch too early than one punch too late. But the bloody trade of blows continued into the seventh, eighth, ninth, a hand and orbital bone broken, his face transforming.

Meanwhile, in the family’s apartment in Miami, Baka forced herself to watch the broadcast. She could see it in his swollen eyes. Something was off.

After the final round, Perez raised his tattooed arms in victory, and Mago wandered off in a fog. He had taken 312 punches in about 40 minutes, for a purse of $40,000.

In the locker room, doctors sutured a cut above Mago’s left eye and tested his cognitive abilities. He did not do well. The ambulance that waits in expectation at every fight was not summoned by boxing officials.

Blood was pooling in Mago’s cranial cavity as he left the Garden. He vomited on the pavement while his handlers flagged a taxi to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. There, doctors induced a coma and removed part of his skull to drain fluids and ease the swelling.

Then came the stroke.

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It is lunchtime now, and the aroma of puréed beef and potatoes lingers. So do the questions.

How will Mago and Baka pay the $2 million in medical bills they owe? What if their friend can no longer offer them this home? Will they win their lawsuits against the five ringside doctors, the referee, and a New York State boxing inspector? What about Mago’s future care?

Most of all: Is this it?

A napkin rests on Mago’s chest. As another spoonful of mush approaches, he opens his mouth, half-swallows, chokes, and coughs until it clears. Eh-eh-eh. Sometimes he turns bluish, but Baka never shows fear. Always happy for Mago.

Some days he is wheeled out for physical therapy or speech therapy. Today, two massage therapists come to knead his half-limp body like a pair of skilled corner men.

Soon, Mago will doze. Then his three daughters, ages 2, 6 and 9, will descend upon him to talk of their day. Not long ago, the oldest lugged his championship belt to school for a proud show-and-tell moment. Her classmates were amazed at the weight of it.

Then, tonight, there will be more puréed food and pulverized medication, more coughing, and more tender care from his wife, before sleep comes.

Goodbye, Mago.

He half-smiles, raises his one good hand, and forms a fist.