Remember my January 22 post Exciting News: More Wit and Wisdom Headed Your Way? I had just put the final touches on a 390-page manuscript for my new book More Wit and Wisdom: Another Year of Foolin’ Around in Bed, and I had submitted it to my publisher, Luminare Press. It brought together a whopping 93,897 words that I poured my heart and soul into during 2023. Yes, you read that right—93,897 words of pure wit, wisdom, and a dash of my trademark humor and modesty!

In my post, I also teased you by announcing that the book has three surprises.

● First, the dedication.

● Second, a preface that is one of the best essays that I’ve written, ever!

● The third is that all proceeds from the sale of the book (and the eventual movie rights) will benefit a special cause.

Up until now, I have kept all three surprises close to my chest, known but to me, to God, and to Luminare.

But now that the book is getting closer and closer to publication, I’m taking three days–May 7, May 8, and May 9–to reveal the three surprises to you.

Today, May 7, it gives me great pleasure to reveal the DEDICATION:

Educators have had my back for my entire life. Growing up in the coal fields of Southern West Virginia, I was blessed to have some of the best educators in the world. They knew the subjects that they taught, and they taught those subjects with passion. Perhaps more important, they loved their students and took personal interest in us. They were living witnesses: we could transform our lives through education just as education had transformed their lives.

My third-grade teacher at Shady Spring Elementary School introduced me to Robert Frost’s poetry. I fell in love–and remain in love–with poetry, and Frost remains my favorite poet. Other teachers pulled me toward Scripps National Spelling Bee Competitions and Voice of Democracy Competitions. And I will always remember the teacher who got me hooked on the parts of speech and sentence diagramming. She knew that she had unleashed a wild child in love with the power of language.

My teachers at Shady Spring High School remain in my memory, too. One showed me that powerful writing and hefty revision go hand in hand. Another helped me realize that typing and bookkeeping were solid backup skills that could open other career paths if my dream of going to college had to be deferred. And what a critical contribution my high school biology teacher provided by welcoming me and several other students to crash his desk every day at lunch, day after day, week after week, semester after semester, from our sophomore year all the way through graduation. Those lunch-time conversations were far more important than any lunch before or since. He gave us his time. He gave us himself.

My professors at Alderson-Broaddus University added wonderfully rich dimensions to my life. Most of them lived on campus–on faculty row–and our classes were so small that we were often their dinner guests. They helped me see the human side of the academic ivory tower that later I would strive to model. My advisor, in her fifties, finished her doctoral degree while I studied under her and served as her Work Study. She gave me an appreciation of lifelong learning.

As a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, phenomenal educators continued to enrich my life. I’m thinking of my advisor who turned me on to textual bibliography. Another professor introduced me to Mary E. Wilkins Freeman–the ongoing focal point of my scholarly research from then until now. I’m recalling, too, the professor who lectured, literary work in hand and not a lecture note in sight, with fiery passion and exultant joy. He allowed himself to be slain in the intellectual moment just as my mother always allowed herself to be slain in the spiritual moment. Through his teaching, I saw the best of both worlds–his and my mother’s. I had a vision of the educator that I would strive to be.

I am honored and humbled to dedicate More Wit and Wisdom: Another Year of Foolin’ Around in Bed to educators around the world because they know that education holds the power to transform lives.

Stay tuned! Tomorrow, I will unveil surprise #2 from More Wit and Wisdom!