Pages are yellowed and dog-eared. Cracks and tears mark the frail book jacket.
Though the thick volume is worn, the words are immortal, centuries later and counting.
The words she penned on the opening page are faded but their impact is undiminished, 40 years later and counting.
“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” is still regularly pulled from its place on my book shelves, most often when writing a newspaper story about a theatre group performing one of the Bard’s plays.
In recent days, “Shakespeare” came off the shelf for a different reason.
Mrs. Maddox passed away.
She was my senior English teacher. She gave me the Shakespeare book, May 27, 1982, as a gift in the days leading to graduation.
“Every once in a while I encounter a student who responds to the classics with the same love that I feel,” Mrs. Maddox wrote. “I have seen this appreciation in you – a reaction that becomes rarer each year.”
Her inscription mentions and encourages me to continue creative pursuits, emphasizing drawing and writing.
In high school, I planned to be an artist. I drew all of the time. For Mrs. Maddox’s class, I drew illustrations of some of our reading assignments: Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” etc.
But the funny thing is, looking at that 40-year-old inscription, Mrs. Maddox emphasized writing at a time when I had no plans to write, or work for a newspaper, unless it was as an artist.
Even my start in newspapers, following studying art and theatre in college, was as a page designer and a political cartoonist. I worked in newspapers for about two years before ever reporting or writing anything.
Yet, several years earlier, Mrs. Maddox seemed to know that words would play a major role in my life and career. She saw something based on my essays for her class. She sensed something, hinting at it in her inscription and in the gift of Shakespeare.
She sometimes knew her students better than we knew ourselves.
She brought words to life in her classes. She understood that Shakespeare could be read but it was written to be heard. She shared films of Shakespeare’s plays in class. She delved into the personalities and soap opera overtones of royal lives to spark student interest in history and literature.
She was patient but tough, encouraging but direct, understanding but strict. She was funny and loved to laugh but she took her job as teacher and the expectations she had for her students seriously.
She was the Kanawha County, W.Va., Teacher of the Year. She taught English classes for 35 years.
Her influence and impact have rippled throughout my life, in ways both big and small, remembered and likely unconsciously. And perhaps, in some small ways, passed along to others.
It’s been decades since last seeing her. I thanked her in person on those occasions.
One of the positive attributes of social media is reconnecting with people from throughout our lives. Mrs. Maddox reconnected with generations of former students via Facebook. I thanked her for her impact on my life there in more recent years. Every opportunity should be taken to thank people who have a positive influence on our lives, before it is too late.
Through Facebook, I learned that Mrs. Maddox had died.
But her influence lives through her family and her students. She changed lives. She shaped lives. That continues.
She closed her inscription with encouragement that she may one day say she knew me when …, adding, “I hope he remembers his senior English teacher.”
Bonnie Maddox, you are, indeed, remembered.
Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.