EDITOR’S NOTE: Brittany Odom was a student of former LMA English teacher Robert Strunk, who died Monday. Odom is a 2005 graduate of LMA.
I've always loved to read. Ever since I was a tiny child, reading was one of my favorite things to do. I've just always had a true, deep, incredible love for words. In the fall of 2004 I was seventeen years old, ready to graduate and get out of my tiny town, and learn about the world when I walked into Mr. Robert Strunk's classroom. I had no idea what to expect from this honors English V class, but it was the only one that semester that I was looking forward to. I never expected it to change my life.
It was under the tutelage of this wise man that I found my passion for writing and art and literature and grammar. Mr. Strunk was not just a teacher of beautiful things, he was a student of them.
We studied Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud,” and it was my privilege to do so in Strunk's classroom. I had never known someone to be in love with a piece of writing before. He read the poem aloud to us, perfect in his diction and meter. When it was finished, I remember a look of great anticipation as he looked up at us from the podium.
He wanted so earnestly for us to feel what he felt. I will admit to you that I did not. It wasn't until he told us about visiting England with his wife, whom he had lost quite tragically, and going to Wordsworth's cottage.
It was in this place that "I Wandered Lonely ... " was written. Mr. Strunk told us about going to the window above the man's desk and looking into a seemingly eternal sea of yellow daffodils. It was a defining moment for him. It became a defining moment for me.
He told us next about a former student he had had and how lovely and passionate she was. He had told her class about his visit to Wordsworth’s daffodils. He said that one day, years after she had graduated, he was teaching in a different school and had a knock on his door.
There was his former student, dressed in a Victorian-style cape, bursting with excitement. She just had to come and tell him that she had seen the daffodils.
I wish you could have seen his face as he recounted the story.
I studied literature at the College of Charleston, and then returned to teach English in the very school where Mr. Strunk had so inspired me. He was on my mind as I began my very first lecture. I talked to him about it often in those years. My goodness, he was proud. The look on his face as I told him about my classroom experiences was the same as it was when he told us about the Daffodil Girl.
I saw Mr. Strunk for the last time on April 11 at a friend’s wedding. I excitedly told him about my upcoming trip to Europe this summer, and he was delighted to hear that Oxford one of my stops. He proceeded to talk about his time in England, and of course, he spoke lovingly of the daffodils. And I was moved.
You see, passionate people are not necessarily in the business of inspiring. Passionate people are in the business of being passionate. All Robert Strunk did was fill his life with the things he loved: literature, art, travel, education. But in the midst of his love affair with beautiful things, he found himself being an inspiration to the students he taught. He was inspiration in its purest form.
And so how do you summarize such a man’s life? I’m only one student of hundreds. There should be great epitaphs and sonnets and odes that should fill volumes. There aren’t. Instead there are people who were inspired and who won’t be the same. And though Mr. Strunk loved the written word and art that has lasted for several lifetimes, I will say that what he’s meant to me and hundreds like me is worth a great deal more than a Wordsworth poem. He is like the daffodils: a vast source of inspiration that doesn’t go away because its season is over.
Mr. Strunk, you are the finest educator ever to step foot inside a classroom. You are tremendous. You are stalwart. You are loved.
