“If you light a lamp for someone, it will also brighten your own path.”
— Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama, c. 563–483 BCE). One of history’s most influential spiritual teachers.
Lost once again. The map was blurred, the faces were turned away, and even my voice felt foreign in my own mouth. I asked for help—and the world, polite but indifferent, kept walking past me.
Then, from the corner of the dream, they came: a quiet order of nuns, habits brushing against the air like whispered prayers. They didn’t question, didn’t doubt, didn’t ask why I’d lost my way. They simply pointed, walked beside me, and led me back—not home, but to shelter.
The next day, in a hall filled with strangers, I stood and wept. A litany rose unbidden from somewhere deep inside my soul:
“You, when others wouldn’t. You who stopped. You who listened. You who saw. You who guided.”
Even in dreams, grace has its own coordinates. It finds the weary traveler and teaches him again how to say thankyou.
If we can rise to that level of grace in our dreams, surely, we can do the same in our waking worlds, not only as we approach tomorrow’s GivingTuesday but also for the days and dreams following.
I’m always moved by GivingTuesday, but here’s what touches me most about all giving on any day. It’s rarely the grand gesture that changes a life. It’s the small one. The held door. The unexpected kindness. The “you, when others wouldn’t.”
History is full of moments when the world pivoted because someone chose to act quietly.
A schoolteacher once told a shy seamstress she had worth. Rosa Parks carried that worth onto a bus—and stayed seated. One small affirmation. One historic refusal to rise.
A girl in a noisy cafeteria slid her tray beside the classmate no one chose. Temple Grandin steadied. And the world gained a scientist who would reshape our understanding of animal behavior with a mind sharpened by that single act of belonging.
A janitor, keys jangling at his side, unlocked a door he technically wasn’t supposed to open. Katherine Johnson stepped through that doorway and, years later, calculated trajectories that sent astronauts safely around the earth and back again. A quiet gesture. A giant leap.
A grieving orphan found milk bottles on her doorstep each morning—paid for by a neighbor who refused to let her go without. Eleanor Roosevelt drank that kindness into her bones and later poured it back into a nation hungry for courage and compassion.
A librarian in rural Arkansas bent one small rule and whispered, “Take as many as you can carry.” Maya Angelou carried the world home in her arms. One book. One voice saved.
A neighbor left warm pies on the porch of a lonely, sick boy. Fred Rogers tasted gentleness—and spent his life serving that same gentleness back to millions.
And once, in a coal camp tucked into the hills of West Virginia, there was a boy with more dreams than dollars. Family scraped together what they could. Hometown folks established a scholarship for books. And a benefactor he never met—a woman with a soft spot for sons of coal miners—left a scholarship in her will. A small legacy. A single key. It opened the doors of Alderson–Broaddus, and he walked through. One quiet kindness at a time, my whole life unfolded.
GivingTuesdaybegan the same way—a small act against a noisy world.
In 2012, while Black Friday and Cyber Monday shouted for our wallets, one community center in New York whispered a different idea: Whatifwesetasidea day togiveinsteadofgrab? No marching band. No corporate roar. Just a fragile invitation to generosity.
From that whisper came a wave.
By 2013, national organizations amplified the call, and tiny local charities set $1,000 goals for school supplies—and met them.
By 2017, corporations began matching donations in the millions, while families sent $10 to local food pantries so children could eat over the weekend.
In 2020, during the hardest months of the pandemic, GivingTuesday saw its greatest surge—global giving and neighborhood kindness flowing side by side, from billion-dollar pledges to collected change for an elderly couple’s grocery delivery.
By 2023, U.S. donors gave over $3.1 billion, even as small wildlife refuges and shelters used single matching gifts to exceed their modest goals.
And 2024 reached new heights: an estimated $3.6 billion donated nationwide. But alongside those vast totals was a tiny nonprofit raising just over $5,000 from 37 supporters—enough to keep its doors open one more year.
Big gestures. Small gestures. All pointing the way.
The nuns in my dream offered direction, compassion, a hand on my elbow saying, “This way.” They changed everything by simply choosing to care. The nuns in my dream led me to shelter.
This GivingTuesday, maybe we can do the same—for someone still searching for the way back.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
—Carl Jung (1875-1961; a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology; explored the human psyche, emphasizing the importance of integrating the conscious and unconscious aspects of the self.)
The air is sweet with success all around the world as another academic year draws to a close. A rightful sense of accomplishment and pride abounds as graduates, their families and friends, educators who guided them, and communities that supported them come together to celebrate this momentous occasion. It’s a milestone that marks the culmination of years of hard work, dedication, and perseverance, as graduates have demonstrated their commitment to excellence in various forms.
As I reflect on my own academic celebrations down through the years as an educator and as a student, one stands taller than the rest: Alderson-Broaddus University’s Honors Convocation on April 5, 1997. Held in Wilcox Chapel, it was the university’s forty-fourth annual convocation, and I was the speaker. I can’t begin to express how honored I was to be returning to my alma mater to speak on such an important occasion. What made it even more special was the fact that the invitation came from a former classmate, Dr. Kenneth Yount. Ken and I were both 1969 A-B grads, and as seniors, he was President of Student Government, and I was Vice-President. Ken went on to become A-B’s Provost/Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and, when he invited me to come back home to our mountaintop campus, I was serving as the Training Coordinator, United States Copyright Office, the Library of Congress.
In delivering my remarks, I had one goal: ignite a spark of introspection and perseverance among those being honored and those in attendance. I believe that my remarks achieved that goal, and I believe that what I had to say then is equally relevant to graduates today whenever they might be on their journey to tomorrow.
I am honored to share my remarks today with readers all around the world.
“Winning from Within”
Dr. Yount, President Markwood, Faculty, Honored Students, Parents, Guests: thank you for such a warm welcome.
When Dr. Yount invited me here today, he asked that I do three things. First, he asked me to sprinkle my remarks with humor. Second, he asked that I speak from the heart about what Alderson-Broaddus has meant to me. Third, he asked that I talk about academic excellence. As an aside, he noted that I had to do all this–make you laugh, make you cry, and make you think–in no more than 15 minutes. What a challenge. In fact, I confess that it makes me feel rather like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I know exactly what I’m supposed to do. I just don’t know quite where to begin.
Thank you for your laughter. You prove that I can be humorous. Believing brevity to be the soul of wit, now let me speak from the heart, from the heart about my experience here at A-B, from the heart about excellence, and from the heart about winning from within.
I do so willingly. I spent four wonderful years on this mountaintop. They were so good, in fact, that I would live them again, and never once say, “If I knew then what I know now.” That’s no small concession, considering that I will turn fifty later this year. But I would live those four years again, because I am able to say–and do say, day after day–that A-B touched my life in ways that made lasting differences.
Let me explain. I grew up in a small town, the sixth child of a West Virginia coal miner. My mom and dad always provided well for us, but in reality, they lived rather anxiously from coal-strike to coal-strike, from pay-check to pay-check. But they rose above those financial challenges and instilled in my brothers and sisters and me a work ethic, the likes of which I have never seen. They made us know that there is nobility in work, that there is honor in work, that there is dignity in work, and that there is love in work. My dad labored for fifty years in the coal mines, but neither he nor my mother ever said to me, “You can’t grow up to be a coal miner.” Instead, they taught me this, and it stands as my earliest lesson, my greatest tribute to them:
If a job is once begun, Never leave until it’s done. Be its labor great or small, Do it well, or not at all.
That quote has governed my life–shaped my life–in ways that probably only a psychiatrist could unravel. But at least one part of it is woven in a continuous thread that requires no untwisting. As early as the fourth grade, I fell in love with words and how words relate to one another and how they serve as building blocks for ideas. I fell in love with the eight parts of speech. I fell in love with diagraming sentences. I took my parents’ guidance at face value and applied it to my love of English.
My classmates, of course, had no idea of how possessed I was by my love of the language. They had an even more feeble understanding of how driven I was by the work ethic that my parents had instilled in me. But I was possessed by my love of words. And I was driven by my work of putting words together. And if my classmates did not quite understand it then, they soon came to realize that they had better step out of my way whenever it came to moving to the front of the class in spelling bees, in parsing, in diagraming sentences, in writing assignments, and in essay competitions. Those honors and all those related to English were mine exclusively. I had claimed them. I knew the subject. I loved the subject. And I had no fear of hard work.
I can reflect smugly on my childhood accomplishments now. They were not easy accomplishments then. Every trip to the front of the class was characterized by no small degree of fear and trepidation. After all, I was only nine years old. But I believed my parents and never once questioned their guidance. I studied hard, worked hard, and played hard at what I loved to do. I knew from the start that my life’s labor would center around English, teaching English, whatever that might have meant to a fourth grader. I thought then that it meant, somehow, making the world a better place by helping others understand the parts of speech and helping them diagram sentences so that they could express their ideas clearly and, obviously, in a grammatically correct manner. Much later in school, I learned what the study of the English language really entailed, but in my nine-year-old world, it was quite sufficient for me to believe that studying English was a great labor, to know that my accomplishments in the field outdistanced my classmates. and to know that I would not leave my pursuit until it was done.
Looking back, I am not too surprised by this turn of events in my life. Remember. I grew up in a small coal mining town. We had no library. Now let me tell you this. We had only two books in our house: the King James version of the Bible and Webster’s dictionary. My mother dog-eared the pages of the Bible and preached and prayed it to the rest of us. Though always mindful of–and let me add influenced by–her spiritual travels, I dog-eared Webster and pursued my own adventures with the English language.
Imagine my parents’ surprise when I declared, again, as a fourth grader, that I was not only going to college but also that I was going to complete a doctoral degree in English. I had not the foggiest idea of how I, in a coal-strike to coal- strike, pay-check to pay-check household, would ever get there. But I believed fully that if I followed by parents’ guidance, stuck with what I loved, worked hard at it, somehow, the door would be opened. I went forward with blind faith, declaring finally in my senior year that I was going to West Virginia University or to the University of Richmond. I applied to both. Then I met Tom Bee, the Admissions Counselor here at A-B, when he visited my high school. I had no idea that his visit would redefine my life. But it did. He encouraged me to apply to A-B. I did and was accepted here as well as at my other two choices.
Thank God, Alderson-Broaddus saw my needs. It saw my needs financially. Remember my dad, the coal miner. It saw my needs spiritually. Remember my mother, the prayer warrior. It saw my needs intellectually. Remember my dream of becoming an English teacher.
How well I remember the summer of 1965 when I visited this campus for the first time. I had no decision to make. I knew from the start, in the inner recesses of my soul, that I was home, not in the Robert Frost sense that “Home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in” but rather in his sense of the word that “Home is something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” I am not certain I deserved the home that Alderson-Broaddus made for me when it took me in, in 1965. And I am even less certain that I deserve to be invited back on an occasion of this importance. But it’s good to be home again, and I thank you heartily.
I use as the springboard for my remarks today an oft-told story about an event that took place in Thailand. The year, 1957. The city, Bangkok. The players, a group of monks and a group of construction workers. The situation, a new highway that was to run smack dab in the middle of the temple. The monks had to move a 10 ½ foot tall clay Buddha from their temple to make room for progress. When the crane began to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. The head monk–the abbot–aside from being concerned about the immediate damage, became even more alarmed as rain began to fall. He ordered that the statue be lowered to the ground and that it be covered with a large canvas tarp to protect it from the rain.
Later that night, the abbot went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if it was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a gleam shining back. He looked closer at the gleam of light, believing that there was something underneath the clay. He fetched a hammer and chisel and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay, the gleam grew brighter and brighter, and by morning, the abbot stood face to face with an extraordinary solid gold Buddha, weighing more than 5 tons.
Historians believe that several hundred years earlier, monks had covered the Buddha with an outer covering of clay to keep their treasure from being looted by an invading Burmese army. Unfortunately, they slaughtered all the monks, and their golden Buddha remained a secret until that fateful date in 1957 when the abbot recognized the gleam beneath the surface and dared to chip away at the clay, to find the real gold within.
What a splendid discovery. Finding real gold, solid gold, within. In many ways, we are all like that Buddha, pure gold inside but covered with a hard outer shell that hides our “golden essence,” “our inner self,” “our real self.” Much like the abbot with the hammer and chisel, our challenge is to break through the surface to find our true essence, to find our pure gold, to win from within.
Today’s Honors Convocation confirms that you have been hard at work with your own hammers and chisels. You have chipped away across academic classes and across academic disciplines. I am more than gratified to see that excellence in writing is being recognized in several fields. I am heartened to see an emphasis on Greek academic excellence. I am encouraged and touched and saddened–all at the same time–by the growing number of memorial awards. At the risk of singling out any, lest they be given a prominence equally deserved by all the others, I cannot help but note the awards being given in memory of Dr. Ruth Shearer and Dr. Louise Callison, two of my own English professors.
I salute you. You have broken through your own hard outer shell. Your own true excellence shows. Your own true gold shines. I salute Alderson- Broaddus as well, for its role in guiding you throughout this time of personal discovery and growth. Today is a shared celebration. As an institution and as individuals, you should feel rightfully proud of your accomplishments.
As I stand here, though, I cannot help but ask myself, “Why aren’t all your classmates being honored?” Wouldn’t that be wonderful? To have so many students recognized today that Wilcox Chapel would be filled in a celebration of collective institutional excellence.
In case I have not made my point clearly enough already, let me hammer it home one more time: we are all solid gold. We are all capable of achieving excellence. Just as I have never met an ugly person–and I have not–so have I never had a student who is not gold, not capable of excellence. Never forget that point for one moment. If you do forget it, now or later on in your life, your competition will do you in. Ounce for ounce, your classmates in the world are just as much solid gold as you and just as capable of distinguishing themselves as you. They, too, can achieve excellence. And to varying degrees, they are. Like you, they have begun chipping away at their outer clay. But unlike you, they haven’t broken fully through the surface, yet, to see what’s inside. That’s what an undergraduate education is all about: taking the time to look within, to do self-exploration, to bring out self-awareness, and to find out who you are. At no time in your life, even when you pursue graduate studies–and I hope that many of you will–at no time in your life will you ever again have the luxury of focusing, twenty four hours a day, on winning from within–on finding yourself–and of being sheltered all the while from the cares of a 9 to 5 work-a-day world by an institution like Alderson-Broaddus, of being nurtured by such caring and dedicated and learned faculty as are assembled with us today. But I believe that you, unlike your classmates, have chipped away more broadly and more deeply. You have taken your pursuit of excellence to a deeper level. You have engaged yourselves in a more spiritual kind of search, a more personal search that has helped you become knowledge navigators in the academic fields you love best.
But, looking ahead, what do you do? It’s simple.
● It has but three words. Stick with it.
● It has but two words. Chip away.
● It has but one word. Persevere.
If you don’t stick with it, chip away, and persevere, your honor today will be short-lived. Here’s why. If you don’t continue to remain engaged in a spiritual search to find more and more of your real gold, more and more of your inner essence, if you don’t continue to develop your talents to the fullest, you will soon get side-tracked. You will soon start looking for self-love in all the wrong places, and you will ignore your own deep-rooted needs. You will get caught up in the busy-ness of life, of trying to demonstrate your self-worth through external sources, through achieving a material worth that will be obvious to others–that they will notice, that they will validate, and that they will appreciate. That approach may well bring you pleasure, accomplishments, a coveted job, big bucks, status, and even success. Just keep in mind, though, that the world is filled with people who have spent their entire lives validating themselves through external sources. All too often, their stories end on the sad note of personal regret and profound unhappiness.
Don’t wait for others to approve you. Respect who you are. Accept yourself. Approve yourself. Continue to tend to your soul, to develop the real you that lies beneath the surface, and to go for your own gold. Doing what you love should govern not just how you spend your time now, not just how you pursue college, but how you pursue your life.
Find what you love. Then do it with dedication, with determination, with daring, with ceaseless work, and with dogged perseverance. If you do, just as you have distinguished yourselves today, so too will you lead lives of distinction that will bring honor to you, to your families, and to Alderson-Broaddus.
Again, I salute all of you on your accomplishments, and, again, I thank you for including me in your celebration.
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Lao Tzu (Ancient Chinese philosopher and writer; founder of Taoism.)
The idea for today’s post exploded magically in my head one Friday morning last spring as I drove to campus for a Creative Writing class. I started thinking about the fact that Fall 2022 would be my last semester as a full-time Professor of English at Laurel Ridge Community College. In the midst of my reverie, I had an insight. I’ve been blessed with the luxury of growing up more than once.
Now I’m writing about that epiphany of many months ago. Candidly, until I started working on this post, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the meanings that the expression “growing up” can have.
The most common, of course, relates to the challenges that we all face as we progress from childhood through puberty into early adulthood.
That meaning goes all the way back to the Coverdale Bible of 1535:
“The childe Samuel wente and grewe up, & was accepted of the Lorde & of men” (1 Samuel ii. 26).
Sometimes, however, the expression can be used to criticize someone who is being silly or unreasonable. I’m thinking of that memorable line in J. D. Salinger’s 1951 novel, Catcher in the Rye:
“For Chrissake, grow up.”
I’m not certain that anyone has ever told me to “grow up.” When I was young, people told me that I was old for my age. Now that I am older, people tell me that I am young for my age.
Be that as it may, I’ve never considered “growing up” as a once-in-a-lifetime rite of passage where we make it to adulthood. One day, we arrive. One day, we’ve grown up. Voila!
For me, “growing up” has been an ongoing journey from Point A to Point B, where Point B is never the end. Instead, it becomes the starting point of another journey.
Let me explain.
Many people might assume that since I was born in the coal fields of Southern West Virginia my Point A of “growing up” was related directly to “getting out.” Even today, West Virginia is the fifth poorest state in the nation. Without doubt, I remember vividly and well the hardships of poverty–the challenges of living from paycheck to paycheck.
What I remember far more are the values and hard work ethic that my dad (a coal miner) and my mother (a fundamentalist minister) instilled in me. What I remember far more is that they taught me to appreciate, value, and celebrate diversity. What I remember far more is that they taught me to embrace and accept everyone.
What I remember far more are the educators who knew the subjects that they taught and who taught those subjects with passion. What I remember far more are the educators who loved their students and took personal interest in us. They were living witnesses to everyone in the coal camp: we could transform our lives through education just as education had transformed their lives.
For me, my first “growing up” had nothing to do with “getting out.” It had everything to do with getting educated. It had everything to do with going to college.
By the third grade, I was telling everyone that I was going to be an English Professor. Looking back, I wonder what planted that idea in my head. I had never met a professor. None lived in my coal camp or in the slightly larger town where we moved when I started the third grade. I had no idea whatsoever what an English Professor did. I had no idea what I would have to do to become one. But I minced no words about it. I was going to become an English Professor. Yet, how could that ever happen? I would have to go to college and that would cost big bucks that my parents didn’t have. Where would the money come from? My teachers and my parents had answers for me. “Work hard. Do your best. Get good grades.” After a few years of seeing my commitment to academic success, they expanded their answer: “Keep it up. You’ll get scholarships. You’ll see.”
And that’s exactly what I did. I went forward with faith, and, as a rising high-school senior, I started the college-application process. Acceptance letters came one by one but without any scholarship offers. I felt good–really good–about being accepted. Sure. Feeling good would pay tuition. Sure. Feeling good would pay for textbooks. Sure. Feeling good would pay for room and board. Yep. I felt good.
Doors were opening for me to get educated, but, ironically, I couldn’t pay to cross the threshold.
Then, just a month or two before graduating third in my class, I received a letter from Alderson-Broaddus University that changed my life forever. I had been accepted with a comprehensive financial aid package–scholarships, Work Study, and student loans–that covered all expenses.
Can you imagine. Me. A hard-working, coal-camp kid with a dream, going off to college. Me. The first in my family to go to college. I pinched myself, and off I went to college.
As part of my studies at Alderson-Broaddus, I had two academic internships in Washington, D.C. One was with Senator Robert Byrd, doing administrative tasks in his office and delivering mail to United States Senators. The second was with the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare–Division of Two-Year Colleges.
When I graduated cum laude from Alderson-Broaddus in 1969 with a Bachelor’s Degree in the Humanities, I landed a position at the Library of Congress, as an editor in its MARC Project. After a year, I moved up and became an editor in the National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, hailed as the bibliographic wonder of the world.
Can you imagine? Me. The hard-working, coal-camp kid with a dream and three books in his early childhood home–the King James Bible; Webster’s Dictionary; and Sears Roebuck Catalog–working as an editor in the world’s largest library, the place with all the books.
I pinched myself over and over again. I was living in my own apartment in the shadow of the Nation’s Capitol. I was working in the world’s premier library. I was a federal employee with a handsome salary and first-rate benefits.
I had grown up. Or so I thought.
Three years into my federal career, I got hooked on research. The yearning for more learning descended upon me, and I realized that I needed to grow up again.
Off I went to the University of South Carolina where I earned my Ph.D. in American Literature, where I became a Mary E. Wilkins Freeman scholar, and where I experienced, for the first time, the joy of teaching.
I was armed with credentials, but I had only one college professorship offer, with a salary so low that I could not afford to accept the position.
I went back home to the Library of Congress where I remained for a total of twenty-five years. I continued my Freeman research and published my The Infant Sphinx: The Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (Scarecrow Press, 1985). I worked with the best professionals in the federal sector. I continued my earlier work as an editor in the NUCPP-Pre-1955 Imprints. I became the Training Coordinator for the United States Copyright Office and then Director of the Library’s Internship Program and after that Special Assistant for Human Resources, giving HR advice to department heads as well as to two Librarians of Congress.
I spent a total of twenty-five years as a federal employee, as a researcher, and as a scholar.
Surely, I had grown up. Or so I thought.
But when I turned fifty, I started feeling antsy about that childhood dream of becoming a Professor of English. I started feeling antsy about that childhood dream of long, long ago. I started fussing with myself every day and throughout the days:
“If not now, when.”
On a leap of faith that I would find a college home, I took advantage of a 1998 early retirement from the Library of Congress. I sold my Capitol Hill home, bought myself a Jeep, and relocated to my weekend home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
In August 1999, Lord Fairfax Community College (now Laurel Ridge Community College), opened its doors to me, first as an Adjunct Professor of English and then as a full-time Professor of English.
Some might say that my childhood dream was deferred for a long, long time.
Others might say that I had to grow up twice before I was ready to grow into the professor that I would become.
I tend to agree with the latter group. My education, my research, my scholarship, and my federal service positioned me to move into academe at the perfect moment. I was prepared for my teaching journey. I was ready for my teaching journey.
Now I have come full circle to where this post began. After twenty-three years, this semester was my last one as a full-time professor at Laurel Ridge Community College. On Friday, December 9, I taught my last class there as a full-time professor.
What an incredible journey it has been! I am so grateful to my Laurel Ridge family who have journeyed with me. And I’m even more grateful to more than 7,000 students, who believe —no, more than 7,000 students who know—that an education will transform their lives just as my life was transformed by education. I am pleased beyond measure that they let me be their learning coach. Every day, they gave me one more chance to do it better. Every day, they gave me one more chance to get it right. Every day, they let me be, me. Every day, they let me be a part of the magic.
Surely, I am grown up now.
I daresay that you have guessed it already. I’m not. In fact, I just heard someone say:
“The good professor is going to grow up again.”
Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do, for the fourth time in my life. I just did some quick and dirty math. It seems to me that each time I grow up takes nearly twenty-five years. With a little luck, the next growing up will take about the same number of years and will be filled with lots of scholarly research, writing and publishing; lots of teaching; and lots of service. Who knows. Only time will tell.
But here’s how I see things right now. By the time I reach 100, I might have grown up. And, if I haven’t, I’ll keep right on with the important work of becoming what I might be.
Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over.
Fannie Lou Hammer (1917-1977; Civil Rights Crusader)
My life has been filled with people who have helped me succeed. People who have helped carry me over. I like to think of them–collectively–as my bridge builders.
BRIDGE BUILDERS–MY PARENTS AND MY SIBLINGS.
My parents, of course, started building the bridge upon which I still trod. They gave me life and empowered me to live mine to the fullest. They provided forever-tools–always to use, never to lose, ever. As a coal miner, my dad lived the life that he worked, and he preached it. As a preacher, my mother lived the life that she preached, and she worked it. They taught me to work hard at and see to the finish anything and everything that I started, fully believing that all work has dignity. They taught me the difference between working for a living and working for love. They taught me to appreciate, value, and celebrate diversity. They taught me to embrace and accept everyone along my way. And, yes, they taught me that with an education I could be whatever I wanted to be and go wherever I wanted to go.
My five brothers and sisters played critical roles, too, in constructing the bridge that has served me so well. Since they were older, I didn’t always understand the full dimensions of their lives: restaurateur; sales person and caregiver extraordinaire; medical technologist; mechanic; and post mistress. Yet, whatever they were doing always impressed me and sent me chasing my own dreams.
BRIDGE BUILDERS–MY EDUCATORS AND MY BENEFACTORS.
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 stretched my bridge by introducing me to Robert Frost’s poetry. I fell in love–and remain in love–with poetry, and Frost remains my favorite poet. Bridge work continued as 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 lengthened and strengthened the bridge still more. 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 expansion 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.
As high school graduation approached and going to college became a reality, benefactors stepped up to help build my bridge. My parents and siblings didn’t have a lot to give, but what they had, they gave. Similarly, the citizens of my hometown set up a scholarship fund to help college-bound students buy freshman-year textbooks. I was one of the first recipients. That $150 check meant my future to me.
My professors at Alderson-Broaddus University added wonderfully rich dimensions to the bridge. 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 presumed academic ivory tower that years later I would strive to model. My advisor, though 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. Fortunately, too, benefactors made it possible for my life bridge to continue growing. Their endowed scholarships helped me fulfill my dream of becoming a college English professor.
As a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, phenomenal educators continued to enrich my life and build my bridge. 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 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.
BRIDGE BUILDERS–MY COLLEAGUES AND MY FRIENDS.
Just as I was blessed to have bridge builders throughout my educational life, so too have I been blessed to have them in my professional and personal life.
I would not be where I am today had it not been for my supervisor at the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. When I was a summer intern in his Division of Two-Year Colleges, he was the one who suggested that the Library of Congress might be the perfect place for me as an editor. He was the one who nudged me to Capitol Hill to submit an employment application.
Without his influence, I would never have had a twenty-five year career at the world’s premier research library.
During that career, I worked with the best professionals in the federal sector. They were awesome bridge builders for me and countless others. One–a pioneer in library automation, at a time when computers were still called machines–helped me move up from being an editor in the MARC Project to being an editor in the NUCPP-Pre-1955 Imprints, the bibliographic wonder of the world. Another made me believe that information is never lost: painstaking and dogged research can always lead to its discovery. Another made me believe that I had it in me to be the Training Coordinator for the United States Copyright Office. Then he led me from there to being the Director of the Library’s Internship Program and from there to being Special Assistant for Human Resources, giving HR advice to department heads throughout the Library as well as to two Librarians of Congress.
After I crossed the bridge from the library side to the academic side at Lord Fairfax Community College, I was blessed to have still more bridge builders in my life. The biggest, perhaps, was the selection committee that recommended hiring me as a professor of English, thereby making my third-grade dream come true. Later, another bridge builder challenged me to teach dynamic 8-hour classes on Fridays and Saturdays. Another graciously asked me to co-advise the Alpha Beta Omega Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa–the International Honor Society of the Two-Year College. Other bridge builders challenged me to teach without walls: Virtual Learning. Still another, without books: free Open Educational Resources personally curated and designed by me. Then there was the seminal opportunity to co-author and edit the college’s report for LFCC’s Reaffirmation of Accreditation, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Add to that team teaching Leadership Honors Seminars and English Honors Seminars and co-presenting at conferences with mathematicians, artists, and psychologists. And I will always remember the growth opportunity afforded by co-chairing the Developmental English Curriculum Team charged with redesigning Developmental English across the Virginia Community College System. Other bridge builders–colleagues, deans, vice-presidents, and presidents–championed me so successfully that, from time to time, I was in the limelight at the college, state, and national levels.
Fortunately, close friends have been there with me throughout my crossing–giving the support that only friends can provide. The “You can do this” pep talks! The “You did it” celebrations. The listening. The sharing. The “Here’s a tissue” followed by “Better now?” The emailing. “What? You kept them all? Guinness Book of World Records? No way!” The texting. The calling. The nothingness. The silliness. The everything-ness. All the things that nurturing friends do…just because that’s what friends do.
BRIDGE BUILDER–MY SOULMATE.
Words cannot describe one of the most important bridge builders in my life: my soulmate, my late partner. Allen journeyed with me across a large expanse of my bridge, quietly adding key components along the way. Gourmet cooking. Gardening. Hiking. Biking. Together we made the journey from who I was before, to who I am now. Together we witnessed the power and depth of love through surrender. Together our hands clasped tightly one another’s, one last time, as he crossed his own bridge into eternity.
BRIDGE BUILDERS–MY GOLDEN YEARS AND BEYOND.
Today, I am in awe. I am standing on the bridge that others built for me, still strong after seven decades. I am standing on the bridge that others will continue to build for me, including my executors who will pay my bridge forward by strengthening the endowed scholarships that Allen and I envisioned and established.
Looking back, the distance from where I started–the coal fields of Southern West Virginia–to where I am today–the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia–is not that far: fewer than 300 miles. But the joys and triumphs that I have experienced while journeying across the bridge exceed by far the wildest dreams of my wild imagination.
Looking ahead toward my Golden Years–whatever they are; whatever they bring–I step forth confidently. My bridge is strong. My bridge is sturdy. My bridge will endure. Those who built my bridge made it according to the best specs.
Looking ahead further still to that time when I will cross from my earthly bridge into the Great Beyond–whatever it is; whatever it brings–I hope that all of my bridge builders will be there to welcome me. My Soulmate/Partner. My Colleagues. My Friends. My Educators. My Siblings. My Parents.
What a great gettin’ up morning that will be as I rejoice in singing the praises of my bridge builders, the ones who carried me over.
The Wired Researcher 