When we began soliciting essays last spring for an article tentatively titled “Great Teachers,” we weren’t sure what or how many we would get. We needn’t have worried. Over the span of about four months, we received scores of submissions, ranging from short, pithy anecdotes to long, elaborate stories brimming with color and heart.
While their pedagogic approaches differed dramatically, the teachers described in these essays were invariably inspiring, reminding us how large and lasting a teacher’s imprint can be. Before he met economics professor Elmer Fagan, wrote Gerhard Rostvold, ’48, MA ’49, PhD ’55, “it was my life’s ambition to return to Minneapolis to become a Montgomery Ward bookkeeper.” With Fagan’s mentoring, he became an economics professor instead. And Burnham Carter Jr., PhD ’55, wrote that the late, great poetry scholar Yvor Winters left him discouraged and deflated when he responded to Carter’s first paper with one word—“nonsense”—and a D. Carter finished the course with a B-, however, and took two more classes with Winters. The legendary curmudgeon “taught me to have standards and to stick to them,” concluded Carter, who went on to distinguish himself as a teacher, diplomat, politician and writer.
Our aim was not to determine Stanford’s best teachers. We asked for and received stories about how teachers changed lives—whether by clarifying a career path, altering a worldview or enriching an understanding of What’s Important.
Unfortunately, we can’t publish them all here; the handful presented is just a sample. We plan to share many others in future issues through a new department in Class Notes, “Teachers We Remember.”
Nobody forgets the teacher who changed his or her life. Here are a few of those remarkable people.
Quietly Brilliant
When I went to Stanford in France as a junior, Ian Watt was one of two professors accompanying our group. This was rather as if, when I went to Little League camp as an 8-year-old, Mickey Mantle had come along as the batting coach.
Four times a week, I met in small seminars with one of the great literary critics of the 20th century, who gave the impression there was nothing he’d rather do than explore British and French literature with a motley group of undergraduates. We were captivated by his mix of aristocratic British glamour and informal American congeniality. We were delighted by his Oxford drawl, his habit of tucking his handkerchief inside the sleeve of his jacket, and his occasional bawdy remarks. Living, dining and working with him for six months in the city of Tours, we saw sides of him that might have taken years to uncover in Palo Alto.
How many of my classmates at Stanford knew Ian Watt as a war veteran? Because the University of Tours wanted to honor a visiting scholar and because The Bridge over the River Kwai was a book by Frenchman Pierre Boulle before it became a celebrated film, Watt was invited to give a public lecture on his experiences as one of the British officers who helped build the bridge as prisoners of war in Thailand. He came to the lectern in his usual tweed, handsome with slicked-back silver hair, and began to speak. Watt had been at the center of one of the most famous episodes of World War II, and he could easily have punched up the drama, casting himself as a hero and describing the cruelties inflicted by his Japanese captors. Instead, he offered a quietly brilliant deconstruction of the book and the film, revealing how they were inflected by Western imperialism and anti-Asian racism.
That was the only time I saw him in the role of lecturer. In his seminars, he prodded us to make the brilliant remarks. He even required each student to teach a day of class. My session, on the poet Thom Gunn, was an exhilarating experience. That afternoon, still heady from the experience, I decided to drop my premed program and become a teacher.
The last time I encountered him was just before graduation, at an afternoon party on the lawn of the president’s home. As the shadows lengthened and the eucalyptus-scented air began to cool, I started to leave when I heard someone shout my name. I looked up to see Ian Watt rushing across the grass toward me. We talked for a moment, he congratulated me on getting into graduate school, and we shook hands and parted. I felt as if I’d been blessed by the Pope.
— Michael Robertson, ’73, of Ewing, N.J., is an associate professor of English at the College of New Jersey and author of Steven Crane, Journalism and the Making of Modern America (1997).
Roots Entwined
Photo: Jose Mercado/Stanford News Service
St. Clair Drake arrived in 1969 from Roosevelt University in Chicago to head up Stanford’s new black studies program. His Black Metropolis (1945) was an acclaimed study of black urban life. He’d been an intellectual disciple of W.E.B. DuBois, an adviser to Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, an acquaintance of anticolonialist philosopher Frantz Fanon, and a social activist in Chicago’s Hyde Park area. For me, Drake embodied the scholar-activist ideal.
I enrolled in his Urban Anthropology course the fall of my junior year. He was in his mid-50s then, short, with a striking, well-kept, long beard and a shock of electric hair. He’d stride to the front of the classroom, slightly hunched over, right hand extended and curled upward as if he still had the cigarette he’d tossed just before class began, and he’d begin to lecture in a cadence that was one part Southern preacher, one part British academic and one part Barbadian storyteller. Many of my fellow students, especially my fellow white ones, mistook the storytelling for a lack of rigor. But Drake was teaching with rigor of a different kind. He would evoke, transport, illustrate and then swoop in and precisely examine.
Eventually, I found the courage to approach him after class. I talked about my proposed research topic: how the ecology of the medieval Islamic city was expressed in the winding streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, where I’d wandered for days the summer just past, drinking in my first experience of the Jewish homeland. Drake embraced my passion and pushed me to think carefully about it in a way that left me feeling respected and engaged. We began having long conversations after class and making appointments to continue our talks. I took a second class from him, then an independent study. We discussed identity, Jewish and black.
One day I asked him why he let me spend so much time talking with him. “Because you’re wrestling with your roots, studying your traditions and questioning them,” he said. This was in the early 1970s, before the rise of Stanford’s remarkable Jewish studies program. There seemed to be a lack of professors whose Jewish selves were integrated into who they were as thinkers and teachers. Drake’s understanding comforted me.
We stayed in touch long after graduation. A few years before he died, I had a last visit with him, accompanied by my wife, a Jewish feminist theologian. Drake peppered her with questions about some biblical points related to his final scholarly work. I told him then how important his insights into culture, identity and the nature of prejudice had been in my work as a lawyer combating stigma and discrimination against persons with AIDS.
In retrospect, I see that he also taught me something else. Our relationship showed how two persons could emerge from distinct traditions and, by meeting each other through storytelling and conversation, strengthen their grounding in their own traditions. That understanding has been a bedrock for me ever since.
— David Shulman, ’73, is supervising attorney in the AIDS/HIV Discrimination Unit of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, a position he has held since 1986.
On The Rebound
Photo: Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service
A tall, scholarly-looking man served as the scorer when I was a freshman playing basketball with the incomparable Hank Luisetti, ’38. The man was Harold Bacon, ’28, MA ’29, PhD ’33, professor of mathematics and a devotee of the sport, whose support kept me on track when my academic career threatened to derail.
My first quarter was a disaster. Having no idea as to my eventual occupation, I had picked engineering as the most demanding and therefore best possible preparation for whatever I would finally choose. But a C- in Descriptive Geometry convinced me I should drop engineering in favor of something more in keeping with my abilities.
Harold Bacon called me into his office. He was determined that I should give engineering another try, and he offered to help me with the math. The result? Two B’s and finally an A—and the realization that what smarts I lacked could be compensated for by hard work.
This remarkable man spent two to three office hours each week guiding me in the mathematical process. His belief in me led to Tau Beta Pi and Phi Beta Kappa, and to an immensely satisfying career in pediatric urology, deeply influenced by the engineering principles he made sure I understood.
— Richards Lyon, ’38, MD ’44, a retired UCSF professor of urology, now teaches his specialty worldwide over the Internet.
Hedonistic Thrill
I was a classics major, so I probably would have found my way into Jody Maxmin’s Ancient Art class even if I hadn’t been cajoled and goaded by my friends. They all said the same thing: “This is the one class you have to take before graduating—no, seriously, dude, I don’t care if it’s your final quarter and you have four unfulfilled requirements—take it anyway.”
So far, my studies had focused primarily on the Beastie Boys and an ongoing effort to claim the title of ugliest bike on campus. After a week in Jody’s class, however, I had practically taken up residence in the art history library. By spring break, I had informed my parents that all I wanted for my birthday was a $200, out-of-print book, Boardman’s The Parthenon and Its Sculptures.
Her class was the pure academic experience, the antidote to the inevitable distractions of college life (what should I do this weekend? what should I do with my life?). Just pondering the figures of the Parthenon, unimaginably old, incomparably beautiful, gave me a feeling of peace; personal concerns shrank against the monumental scale. There is a reckless, hedonistic thrill in studying something for no reason other than the fact that it turns you on.
I learned from Jody that the artists carving the figures atop the Parthenon took time to finish the backs of the sculptures, which would never be seen by the worshipers below. Even if man couldn’t scrutinize their creation, the gods could. A lazy artist might pull a fast one on Pericles, but he wouldn’t fool the big boys on Olympus.
My first paper for Jody was like the work of a lazy sculptor. I whipped it out in a night, relying on the same tricks that had gotten me through freshman CIV, creating the illusion of diligence without really breaking a sweat. When it came back, her comments were longer—and far more interesting—than the paper itself. How humbling! She did all the work, connecting my sloppy thoughts, infusing my lame words with true passion. I made up my mind then: the next time I created something for her, I would make sure it was the best I could do. I would not risk offending a goddess.
— Phil Klemmer, ’96, is a writer in Los Angeles.
Flare Nostrils! Heave Bosom!
Ed Sousa/Stanford News Service
I was a chemistry major when I transferred to Stanford. My real love, however, was music—specifically, the pipe organ, which I had studied in Salzburg on a semester abroad. So the first thing I did after buying my chemistry textbooks was to look up Herbert Nanney, MA ’51, professor of music and University organist.
I may have been pretty good at playing the notes, but my first lessons with him showed me how much more there was to music. I have saved the comments he wrote in my musical scores to get me to play more effectively: “Flare nostrils!” “Heave bosom!” “Suffer!” “Snarl like a dog with a bone!”
My chemistry and physics classes were a real grind, whereas I found nothing but pleasure in practicing the organ four or five hours a day. When I whined to Herb one day about the chemistry classes, he looked me in the eye and said, “Why don’t you pursue a career in music? It’s what you’re meant for.” That was all I needed to hear; he changed the course of my life.
Herb’s musical tastes ranged from sacred and classical to theater and pop. Often, he decorated hymns at MemChu services with Hollywood-style endings, which he called “MGM amens.” He scandalized us by playing Bach trio sonatas in rumba rhythm. He was the life of every party, improvising whole pieces on people’s phone numbers. When he gave a serious recital, however, we felt the depth of his love for the music and the sincerity of his playing.
His lively imagination made him a spontaneously creative teacher. A favorite story comes from a colleague of mine who studied with Herb at the same time I did. She was preparing to play two dissonant works by Schoenberg and Ives in a concert in Berkeley. When she came to her lesson nearly in tears a week before the concert, he told her, “Will you stop worrying about the notes and convince us we can still have orgasms in the 20th century?”
A treasured memento of my time with Herb sits in my home today. In 1925, the bench of MemChu’s original pipe organ was replaced. Herb stored the ornately carved bench at his home for years. After he died in 1996, his widow called to say that he had left it to me.
— James Welch, ’73, MA ’75, DMA ’77, of Palo Alto, performs in concerts worldwide and serves on the music faculty of Santa Clara University.
The Study Of Women
I was one of three men in Professor Estelle Freedman’s packed class, The History of the American Woman. Professor Freedman, who co-founded Stanford’s program in feminist studies in 1980, made thought-provoking, well-reasoned points, listened respectfully to our questions and always sought our comments. Twenty years later, I’m a husband, father, lawyer and writer, and Professor Freedman’s views and lessons on feminism still resonate deeply with me, affecting my approach to my marriage, my role as a parent, my professional relationships and my writing. I am delighted that she continues the fight.
—Daniel A. Olivas, ’81, practices environmental law with the California Department of Justice in Los Angeles and has published numerous works of fiction and poetry.
Finding Her Strength
Photo: Chuck Painter/Stanford News Service
In high school, I got A’s. At Stanford, I got B’s and C’s. I made my way through three years of mechanical engineering doing okay, but not really sure I was very good at anything.
Then I hit the first quarter of the thermosciences series and Professor Robert Moffat, Engr. ’66, PhD ’67. In his class I discovered I could actually be good at engineering—good enough to get my first A+. I had finally found something I loved doing and someone who encouraged me to do it. Professor Moffat—one of the few engineering professors who did not seem put off by having women in his class—became my friend and mentor that last year. I left Stanford with a clear sense of my abilities and the strength to survive in a male-dominated field.
— Shelly Williams Trainor, ’77, of Palos Verdes, Calif., is a full-time mother working toward her teaching credential in high school math.
The Human Side
With his raspy voice, his penchant for skewering students by name and his encyclopedic knowledge, Professor Robert Horn was a fearsome figure in the classroom. But countless unsuspecting juniors and seniors emerged from his courses in political science with a far richer understanding of Western civilization, the role of law in Western society, and, in particular, the central role of the Supreme Court in our nation’s heritage. Having had our first deep drink from Dr. Horn’s intoxicating intellectual well, many of us chose to enter the legal profession, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, ’58, and California Gov. Gray Davis, ’64.
In truth, I never had a teacher who cared more about his students. Gruff on the outside, he was at heart an enormously kind mentor, especially for those of us who hoped someday to become lawyers, as he himself wanted to do until thwarted by financial hardship in the post-Depression years.
In a department of political science, he emphasized the political more than the science. He sought to illuminate how the uniquely American concept of “ordered liberty” came to be built, painfully and not always logically, by litigants and lawyers, legislators and jurists, philosophers and writers. His use of the case method revealed the law to us as a passionate, intensely human world of conflicting values and visions for our own society.
In 2000, I proudly took my two young sons to meet the man who had done more than anyone to help me find my purpose in life: using the law to build a more just, peaceful and humane world.
— Nelson G. Dong, ’71, is a partner in the Seattle-based international law firm Dorsey & Whitney; he also serves as secretary and general counsel to the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American advocacy group.
A Stanford Institution
My favorite memory of Professor Mary Sunseri, MA ’40, did not occur during my freshman year when she convinced me that studying calculus was satisfying, and possibly useful. It did not occur during my junior and senior years when I was one of her student readers, correcting the work of freshmen.
It did not occur when, as graduation approached and jobs beckoned, she advised us to accept nontraditional offers that would open doors of opportunity. (I did, and spent 35 years growing with an industry that did not exist when Mary offered her advice.)
It did not occur in the four decades during which I corresponded with her and occasionally met other women following Mary’s advice to pursue nontraditional opportunities. It did not even occur when, in 1986, I had the privilege of being invited to the math department’s celebration of Mary’s emerita status.
No, my favorite memory—the one that affirms Mary’s position as one of Stanford’s all-time teaching greats—occurred last May at the luncheon of the Founding Grant Society. Speaking to the group, vice provost for undergraduate education John Bravman, ’79, MS ’81, PhD ’84, noted that Mary was present and that she had taught Stanford students for more than 50 years, including Bravman himself. “I would hazard a guess that Professor Sunseri has taught more units than any other faculty member in the University’s history,” he said. “She is one of Stanford’s true institutions.”
That’s when I really smiled in remembrance and appreciation.
— Ruth M. Kamena, ’51, of San Francisco, is retired after a 35-year career in systems and software development.
Bonehead English
Photo: George Macleod
I entered Stanford as a freshman in 1939. My family lived on a small farm—chickens, rabbits, a cow—on the edge of Palo Alto. I milked that cow, Blackie, every morning before I rode my bicycle out to class.
Right off, I flunked the English A exam. As a result, I was assigned to an all-male class jokingly referred to as Bonehead English. It was a five-day-a-week, 8 a.m. class for only two credits. At the first meeting, our instructor, Miss Shoup, assigned a composition to be turned in the next day so that she could gauge how tough her job was going to be. Two days later, she addressed the class. “I have been teaching Bonehead English for 20 years. This is the worst class I have ever had. One of you does not even know how to spell Stanford!”
She passed out the papers. I had spelled Stanford . . . Standford!
The woman was a tyrant. She had us write a composition every day. If there was even one spelling or grammar error, she put a giant red X across the entire paper and required an extra composition to take its place.
One morning at about 8:05, she commented dryly, “You know that Stanford is known as the Farm. This is the only class I have ever taught that actually smelled like a farm.” The class roared with laughter.
After things settled down, I carefully moved my foot out from under my desk and glanced down. My boot was covered with cow manure.
But the regimen of five compositions a week, plus about 25 extras because of errors, began to have an effect. If I have any writing skills today, I owe them entirely to Miss Shoup.
— George Macleod, ’43, MS ’48 (pictured here milking Blackie before class), lives in Kenwood, Calif., and is owner and president of Indian Springs Ranch Vineyards.
That Booming Voice
Ronald Rebholz, ’54, took every kid in the room by the collar and rammed us headfirst into the language, the emotion, the meaning and the contemporary relevance of Shakespeare’s work. He did it by reading aloud. When Professor Rebholz started to read, the heavens seemed to open right there in that off-white classroom in the Outer Quad. It was as though each of us were living in the tortured skin of this particular Shakespearean character. I would go back to my dorm room and reread the whole play, trying to recreate what I’d experienced in the classroom.
I can still hear the beautiful, booming voice that struck awe and love of language in all our sophomore hearts. It was this voice, and the gutsy intellect behind it, that sparked my lifelong love of stories, reading and theater.
— Janet Hardy Willson, ’68, is a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Culture And Counterculture
Jose Mercado/Stanford News Service
In Austria II, we got to listen to Wallace Stegner bring Turgenev to life in a former ballroom of the Grand Hotel Panhans; stroll with Wallace and Mary Stegner to the bakery for pastries; dine, breakfast and lunch with them; and puzzle at their affection for that art form—opera—which, Wallace explained, joined the dramatic, the literary and the musical as one.
Once back on campus, the Stegners held an Austria II reunion at their house off Page Mill Road, and Wallace greeted us with a trick handshake, bottle cap embedded in palm. He retired from Stanford prematurely in 1971 after a countercultural insurrection over his stewardship of the creative writing program. All the Little Live Things (1967) was his generation-gap novel about a retired literary curmudgeon repulsed by hippie cultists and drawn to a young mother’s reverence for all life; it could stand as his bittersweet farewell to Stanford.
In the mid-1970s, my wife and I spent an afternoon with Wallace and Mary Stegner. As we discussed how much the new freeway would ruin their view, a tiny bird hit one of the big windows and fell. Outside, Wallace cradled the stunned nuthatch in his palms to warm it; and that bird, like some student of his, flapped, flopped down the brick walk, waited a moment, then took wing.
The next time I saw Wallace Stegner was in the early 1990s in Boulder, where he was exhorting a thousand cheering college students to take up environmental action. The generational turmoil that may have contributed to his leaving Stanford was long over. To these students, he was fully a hero. Pointed out to the crowd as an old offender from the Panhans, I couldn’t have been more proud.
— Baine Kerr ’68, is a medical malpractice lawyer in Boulder and author of two medical-legal thrillers.
A Little Celebration
Dr. Ronald Hilton was an overwhelming presence in my life at Stanford. As a professor of languages and as the director of the Hispanic-American and Luso-Brazilian Institute at Bolivar House, he encouraged penetrating research, scoffed at superficial thinking and rejected vague references. He lifted his students from mediocrity, imbuing us with a spirit of scholarship, curiosity and accuracy.
It has been more than 50 years since I studied with Dr. Hilton, and if anything, he seems even more astute. Now an emeritus professor and Hoover Institution visiting fellow, he follows world news around the clock, distilling what he considers most important and sending e-mail postings to hundreds of people internationally.
Dr. Hilton turned 90 in July of 2001. As the date approached, his doting former students suggested throwing a little celebration, thinking champagne and cake. To Dr. Hilton, however, a gathering of more than three people constitutes a conference. So he organized a weeklong International Conference on Globalization, attended by dozens of distinguished speakers who discussed the problems of the world. Dr. Hilton presided at the all-day sessions, often followed by evening meetings at his home. Who had time for champagne and cake?
— Jacquelyn Drew Atkin White, ’51, is the presiding and administrative municipal judge for Laguna Vista, Texas.
Letting Go
Photo: Linda Cicero/Stanford News Service
Art professor Matthew Kahn and I didn’t have any particular bond. Most of the time, in fact, I hated him.
I remember huddling for hours on a cold stone bench in the Loggia dei Lanzi as a member of Italy Group V, working on a charcoal drawing of Michelangelo’s David. When I finally offered it to Matthew Kahn for comment, he said it was overworked, not free enough. Once clear of his office door, I swore quietly, determined to show him. I tried again and again, becoming nearly as much a fixture on the Loggia as the Cellini bronze of Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa. Each time, I presented the result. Each time, he dismissed it. “Too finished,” he said.
I hated him, but the more I hated him, the better I got.
After a dozen attempts to capture David’s face, I became convinced I would never please Matthew Kahn. As my quarter in Florence drew to an end, other classes demanded my time. Finally, the night before the drawing deadline, I sketched one last David, relying on muscle memory from the previous drawing and on the marble countenance in my mind. I allowed just one chance at each line, and the quality of the image surprised me.
Matthew Kahn studied it for a moment and said, “This one is good. This one has life.”
And then he tore it up.
I was devastated, but the lesson stuck.
“Don’t fall in love with what you create,” he told me. “Don’t hold onto it as if it were a stroke of luck. It was talent. And when you have talent, you can always create something even better.”
More than 20 years later, I produced a film tracing the impact of teachers on successful people. The film won an award at the 1984 National Educational Film Festival in Oakland. After accepting the honor, I visited Matthew Kahn to thank him.
— Terry C. Smith, ’65, is a freelance photographer, writer and video producer in Los Angeles.
Really Hard Science
Long before James Gibbons, MS ’54, PhD ’56, became dean of the School of Engineering, he taught electrical engineering, giving Stanford students the knowledge to lay the foundation for Silicon Valley. The concepts he covered were inherently difficult. In one lecture, he presented so much material that I couldn’t distinguish the details from the concepts. I boldly wrote a memo saying, “I am sure that all of the info is important, but you don’t highlight items for us; you don’t say, ‘Pay attention to this’ or ‘This equation governs the whole process.’ Your tidal wave of facts makes it difficult to follow the lecture.”
In the following lecture, he graciously responded by saying to the class, “I got a good comment, and I am going to follow it.” His lectures immediately became easier to follow as he put each point in context with comments like, “This single issue is the governing fundamental” or “Here comes some theory, so relax while I go through it.”
Gibbons always insisted on seeing your work, and he always caught your errors. If you got the right answer but showed none of your calculations, you got a zero. On the other hand, if he followed your entire calculation and approach, then noticed that you punched the wrong numbers into your HP25 calculator, he’d still give you credit because you approached the problem correctly.
— Cesar A. Moreno, ’81, MS ’84, of Santa Clara, Calif., works for Lockheed Martin as a software systems engineer on satellites.
Springing Back
Photo: Linda Cicero/Stanford News Service
I tentatively signed up for a course called Plath, Sexton and Rich during winter quarter of my sophomore year. It was tentative only because the course was offered by Diane Middlebrook, and I had heard two things about her: one, she was brilliant; and two, she was working on a biography of the famed poet Anne Sexton. The idea of taking a small-group seminar from such an expert made me feel insecure. Would the class be filled with grad-student types talking about critical theory and feminist methodology? I’d had a conservative, religious upbringing and was still a bit naïve at age 19. I was sure I would feel like a complete dunce if I ever opened my mouth in the class.
I took the course anyway, my interest in the poets outweighing my fear of being seen as an ignorant hick. And yes, Diane Middlebrook was brilliant, poised and articulate. But she was also warm, funny and encouraging. Each week, I grew a little bolder in expressing my opinions.
My last short paper was on Sexton’s search for love and identity, as expressed in her collected Love Poems. One poem in particular, “In Celebration of My Uterus” (1969), really had me scratching my head. I read it over and over until the wee hours, then wrote my paper.
When the paper came back, I was eager to read the comments. “An interesting reading of ‘Celebration’—I’ve never seen it treated this way,” Professor Middlebrook began.
“Uh-oh,” I thought. “I guess I really was up too late.”
But she continued: “I don’t get a credible sense of wholeness out of Sexton’s Love Poems, and you’ve helped me see why.” I was stunned. I had helped her see something new? Sexton’s biographer?
It may have been a small thing to her, but it had a huge effect on me. I felt my confidence spring back. I began to trust my instincts, began to see myself on an equal footing with my savvy peers. Today, whenever a little self-doubt begins to surface, I think of her class and the insights I was able to generate on my own, and how a world-class mind was generous enough to make me feel smart.
— Elayne Wells Harmer, ’87, former legislative counsel for a U.S. senator, is a full-time mother in San Ramon, Calif., and half of the singing duo CharlyElena.
