Rest Well, Dr. Zolbrod

Word came this morning that Paul Zolbrod passed away yesterday. May his memory be a blessing.

Dr. Zolbrod first taught me when I was a freshman at Allegheny College. It was one of those survey course that English majors, even English majors at a liberal arts school, must take--the first half of a survey of British Literature.

That was fifty-ish years ago. I dug out some musty folders of old college papers this morning, and it is amazing how many of my professors I have forgotten, past even the point of look-at-the-name-and-oh-now-I-remember. But I never forgot Dr. Zolbrod. He was one of the teachers who shaped my entire career.

Dr. Zolbrod had several rare gifts as a teacher. There was the more typical gift of helping you see why the material was interesting and compelling. He challenged you to really think through stuff, which was a welcome new challenge. College was the first time I understood that there were two basic flavors of literature teachers-- those who would listen to any interpretation as long as you could back it up with evidence and reason, and those who knew the One True Interpretation and expected you to spit that back. Dr. Zolbrod was the former, and sitting in his class solidified for me which kind I wanted to be.

Dr. Zolbrod was no pushover when it came to grading papers, but somehow, when I left his office after talking about the crappy paper I'd just gotten back, I felt good about myself. I could see where I'd missed the boat, but I also could see the strengths that I was going to carry into the next one.

As Facebook has filled up with tributes to him, I see multiple versions of what I wrote-- He could see possibilities in you that you could not see in yourself. It was so energizing and empowering. It would have been easy for him to make me feel stupid; instead, he made me feel smart and capable and I promised myself that I would try to do that for the students I hoped to teach some day.

Dr. Zolbrod gave us a choice-- write a final paper, or go teach a unit about one of the works in the middle school down the hill from the college. I jumped on that opportunity, and later he set me up with the chance to teach several weeks' worth of Beowulf to gifted third graders. It was exciting to get a taste of the work, and he made that happen.

He retired from Allegheny in 1996 and moved to New Mexico where he kept teaching and focused on the work he had been doing for years with the Navajo Creation Story. He had started out in Pittsburgh, served in the military, looked at the student radicalism of the 60s, published a variety of works, and really never stopped displaying curiosity and engagement with life (here's a remarkable interview he gave when he turned 90). As his daughter wrote,

He looked so closely at what was around him , whether it was the sun rising over the mesa, the woods on a morning walk on Rogers Ferry, the arches of the churches in Tuscany, the weave of the Navajo rugs he studied. And he paid such careful attention to the people he interacted with, especially to working people, with whom he closely identified. And of course, he read so deeply, and listened so intently to oral recountings and to music. He was so engaged with history of places, including Crawford County, where my brother and I grew up, and with ideas, and the way they intersected. He wanted to capture all of it. The soundtrack of my childhood was the clackety clack of his manual typewriter coming from his basement office.

I connected with him, like many of his former students, on Facebook, where he shared personal recollections as well as thoughts and insights about the world unfolding. It was miraculous to me that he remembered me, had followed some of my teaching career, and read some of my writing about education.

Dr. Zolbrod is one of a handful of people who were an inspiration and a model for me as a teacher; I was a better teacher because of him. The world is a better place because he was in it. Condolences to his family. May his memory continue to be a blessing.