College Mentors (2)

Della Pack Encouraged Me to Write

At the time of my initial college enrollment, our Freshman class was the largest in the history of the school.  To avoid inequity, the registrar shuffled the order of registration, and those whose surnames started with a “B” ended up in the last group.   Every time I tried to enroll in a class I was told the class was closed.

They had a problem, however.  Every incoming freshman was required to take English.  All the English class offerings were full.  They solved the problem by inviting the wife of a Bible faculty member to teach an English class.  Her name was Della Pack.  Secularists would have said it was the “luck of the draw.”  Dr. Johnson would have said it was the providence of God. I’ll go with Dr. Johnson.

At that time freshman English was mostly English composition.   We needed the class because we would be writing research papers throughout our collegiate career, and the basic English course gave us the appropriate tools for that task.  Della Pack taught us how to organize our writing, how to use the library, how to do research, and how to put sentences together.  She also drilled us on our spelling skills.  We completed several writing assignments during that time.   She was the first person to pick up on the fact that I was blessed with the ability to write prose, and she encouraged me in that.  I’m really amazed that she saw anything in my writing.  I didn’t have a typewriter at the time, and my penmanship was absolutely terrible.  I think I must have been absent from school on the day they taught penmanship.

She may have thought she saw some hidden writing talent, that could be shaped into something better, but she also realized that I was a West Texas farm boy, filled with insecurities, and culturally illiterate.  For some reason she took me on as a project, and I will be eternally grateful for her nurturing.  Many years later when I wrote my first published book, I dedicated it to Della Pack and Mima Williams.  I’ll write about Miss Williams later.

There was a connection between Della Pack and Bob Johnson.  Like Dr. Johnson, she usually invited R. C. Bell to substitute for her when she couldn’t make it to class.   R. C. Bell loved English literature.  Shakespeare was one of the components of the freshman English course.  I soon realized that he loved the bard almost as much as he loved the Bible, and Bell knew the literature of the Shakespeare almost as well.  He spent some of his class times talking about Othello.  I can’t say that Othello was my favorite bit of Shakespearian writing, but I marveled at the way Othello fascinated him.   He was more excited about Shakespeare than the most rabid football fan is about his favorite team.  Did it have any relevance to my life?  When you stop to thinking about,  the bard from Stratford-on-Avon provided the foundation for all of those who are serious about writing in the English language.  That’s why I was introduced to Julius Caesar in the 9^th grade, Macbeth, in the 12^th grade,  Othello in freshman English and Hamlet in sophomore English.