People and Places

Abstract

L ITERATURE and languages came first, history later. Many helped along the way. On-the-job training was also useful. Even the occasional Pooh-Bahs served a purpose. For the opportunity to single out individuals and institutions that contributed, this academic turned editor is grateful. How explain the appeal, to an adolescent, of a career in teaching, most honorable if not most ancient of the paid professions? The high school in Amesbury, a small town in northeastern Massachusetts, was not very good in the early I930s, but it did have devoted teachers. One stands out. Roland H. Woodwell was a Harvard product who taught English in a way that impelled youngsters to excel. He even wrote articles. If this was what teaching was all about, one could do worse in choice of calling. At age sixteen, one felt impelled to attend Harvard. But Harvard felt otherwise in I936. So did Bowdoin in I937, after one had had a high school postgraduate year. Middlebury's acceptance arrived in midor late summer. The Vermont institution, so unmodish then that strangers were forever locating it in Connecticut, was known for its language schools. It also had a strong English department and a separate department of American literature. It was small, coeducational, and miles from home. It would, in short, do. Middlebury's staff included dedicated teachers and scholars, as well as prima donnas and other assorted characters-the usual faculty mix. President Paul D. Moody, son of the evangelist Dwight L. Moody, was unusual: he was approachable, believable, and beloved. Required courses included freshman English, taught in sections, mine by Harry Goddard Owen, dean in summer of the Bread School of English, and contemporary civilization, taught to the entire first-year class by Waldo H. Heinrichs. You chose the text-the daily Christian Science Monitor, New York Herald Tribune, or New York Times-and became a lifelong newspaper junkie. Electives included French and German, music, philosophy, and political science. Not English but American literature became one's major, in large part because of Reginald L. Cook, Middlebury alumnus, former Rhodes Scholar, and energetic one-man department. Part-time work in the college library and on the college weekly ran concurrently with academic instruction. In summer, one was an unpaid slavey in the family Mom and Pop grocery store back home in Amesbury. One left Middlebury in I94I without honors and within a cocoon. College and town were small, isolated, and conservative. Family obligations soon peeled away protective layers. The cocoon disintegrated