Presidential Address 1999: Humanism and Heroism

Abstract

I recall two things about my exchange with the friendly soul who rang me several years ago with the offer to stand for the second vice presidency of the MLA. First is the vivid recollection of my serious and mostly incapacitating illness at the time: as it turned out this was to disable me almost completely for the first year's Executive Council meetings. The second is my somewhat ungracious response to the (mostly undeserved) compliment contained in the suggestion that I should accept the nomination: “Do I have to do anything if I get elected?” I asked with almost ridiculous impertinence. I think the answer was no, and I think I should say in my own defense that I formulated my question very specifically to mean only “do I have to do anything very much as second vice president?,” a position I had frivolously assumed was not usually thought of as bearing a great responsibility. In any case, I was elected, and I did nothing the first year except, as I said, miss most of the meetings because of illness, unending treatment, and pain. Never having had much to do with administration during the many, too many, decades of my teaching life, I have to report to you that in my year as first vice president I had the opportunity at the outset to see how a major professional organization is run by really competent people and, second, to witness its humane and rational responses to the various demands of our time and those of our by now somewhat anxious guild, especially its younger members, for whom the job crisis has been so disabling and discouraging a symptom of this fin de siècle. Because of this genuine learning experience throughout my presidency, I am really grateful to, and happy to mention in particular, the extraordinary talents of our superb executive director, Phyllis Franklin, whose sensitive intelligence and marvelous skills not only guided us as a very large professional organization through a series of new challenges but, to speak personally, rescued your faltering president on numerous occasions when his temper and peculiar sense of humor got the better of him. May I also mention Phyllis Franklin's senior colleagues in the association, to whom I and all the other elected officers and members owe so much: Martha Evans, director of MLA book publications; Terence Ford, director of Bibliographic Information Services and editor of the MLA International Bibliography; Judy Goulding, managing editor of MLA publications; Amilde Hadden, director of financial operations; Maribeth Kraus, director of convention programs; David Laurence, director of English programs and ADE; Regina Vorbeck, associate executive director and head of the Division of MLA Operations; Elizabeth Welles, director of foreign language programs and ADFL; and Carol Zuses, coordinator of governance and assistant to the executive director?