Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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Inter-office MEMO Junior year in high school, my English teacher looked like a character ripped from the pages of a Mickey Spillane novel. Memory says he stood well over six feet tall, with the girth of an Irish barkeep, forearms the size of ham hocks, his left wrist strangled by a too-tight, no-nonsense Timex watch, hair slicked back like Tony Soprano and sporting the kind of ugly, GI-issue Coke-bottle spectacles the grunts nicknamed BCGs (birth-control glasses). He chain-smoked flterless Pall Malls (during class!) and had a voice deep enough to step in. But he wasn't a character from a book. He was real enough. He was also a Catholic priest. And he loved, he adored, he relished words. Shakespeare's sonnets, passages from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, excerpts from Orwell. He read them aloud to the class in that Orson Wellesian voice of his, riveting even teenage boys. There was something about this man's man of an English teacher — reveling in his recitation of beautiful prose or verse, sitting on a stool behind a lectern, dragging on his smokes between paragraphs for dramatic effect — that made it OK for a boy to like literature. If Fr. DeBosier could embrace a book, so could any of us — th' hell with peer pressure or appearances. And to this day, when I open to a chapter and start to read, I think of the teacher who inspired me to allow my young self to fall in love with words. — Editor Kane Webb This month's staff question: Who was your most infuential teacher? On the frst day of Fred Hohing's college creative-writing class in 1967, he brought in a record player and lyric sheets, which we used to deconstruct two Bob Dylan songs, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "My Back Pages." Yes, part of my admiration for Fred is directly traceable to Dylan's spellbinding word combinations about magic swirling ships and jingle-jangle mornings and existences led by confusion boats and escapes from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. But the thought that I might learn to work the language with an appreciable amount of skill — that was Fred's doing. During that freshman semester, driven by his encouragement, I must have flled a ream of paper with fction and prose poetry. Nothing worth a nickel, really, but good practice. Jack Welch Senior editor 10 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13 In fourth grade, at Clough Pike Elementary in Cincinnati, I wrote a story about a ghost on a masted ship. Spent hours on it, my achy hand smudged with graphite. Mr. Laehr loved the fnal but suggested that I lop off the unnecessary wrap-up of a conclusion. My frst editor. Josh Moss Managing editor When I was getting ready to graduate college, I gave my résumé to my favorite professor to take a look at and give me his thoughts. When he handed it back to me, he said, "Looks great, although I would recommend sending a picture of yourself in a swimsuit along with it." I've been leery of men ever since. Mandy Wood Advertising account executive Miss Amy Hack, frst and second grades at Coleridge- Taylor Elementary. She stunned my parents when I brought back homework on the frst day. She had us draw a map of the Western Hemisphere and memorize its countries and capitals. The capital of Honduras? Tegucigalpa. Nicaragua? Managua. She gave us lesson plans that were to be completed by the end of the week on our own time. The timemanagement skill has stuck with me to this day. The rest? Well, I'm still waiting for the capital of Belize to show up as a trivia question. Not to make her seem like a uncompromising jerk — she wasn't at all. She was very sweet and visited the home of every student to greet families before classes began. One time, her then-boyfriend had the class propose to her for him. She said yes. It was an extremely exciting moment for a frst-grader. She now goes by Amy Dennes and is an assistant superintendent for JCPS. Mary Austin Associate editor/editor of special publications Professor Cleve Wilhoit from Indiana University's journalism program. As a student with a strong work ethic but low confdence, Wilhoit (a mentor to many) spent a lot of time building me up well beyond my college years. I'll never forget him. (But if I could give a shoutout to the "coolest" teacher I ever had, that would be Ms. Bloomingdale. Third Grade. St. Paul the Apostle School in Los Angeles. She was on Love Connection with Chuck Woolery.) Anne Marshall Staff writer Mikey Staut, aka Mr. Large, was my high school math teacher in Fairfeld, Ohio. He was very keen on critical thinking and always challenged us to do creative problem solving. Because of him I see math in real life, relating to real people. One afternoon I returned to class after running an errand for him. The class had moved all the chairs, leaving one in the center. He handed me a handful of tacks and we learned about geometry. We were like Pythagoras on the beach, playing with shells and discovering the Pythagorean theorem. He helped us learn from discovery. Suki Anderson Art director I have been blessed to study under some brilliant and inspiring teachers. For many who took political-science courses at IU Southeast in the last 15 or so years, Dr. Tom Kotulak ("Dr. K" or just "Doc") was one such educator. Doc's enthusiasm for political theory was surpassed only by the joy he received when one of his students fnally "got it." He encouraged us to think big. Some of us "K's" had enough credit hours taught by him to minor in Kotulak. Doc armed his gang with crazy ideas like liberty and justice. (He was also typically armed with a cigarette and a Miller Lite, but that's another story.) Among the K's are a number of community and government leaders, more than a handful of attorneys, and a few current law students. I fall into this last group. Doc passed away over the summer just before I joined the frst-year class at U of L's Brandeis School of Law. There is no question that this 35-year-old father of three would not have considered the challenge of a legal education without Doc's support and encouragement, his inspiration and his friendship. Requiescat in pace! Tony Singleton Louisville.com