The Amherst League of Women Voters will have its annual book sale once again after COVID cancellations the past two years, accepting donations of books in good condition through last week at the Fort River School gym.
I donated dozens of books to the League’s sale three years ago, and the day before it opened, I marveled at the teetering stacks covering every available surface in the gym.
I couldn’t imagine how they’d ever make sense of the massive jumble by opening day. But one of the League members assured me they have enough grandsons among them to do the heavy lifting and help get the books organized before buyers are allowed into the gym, this year on July 29-31 and Aug. 5-7.
I say bless the hearts of the League and the grandsons because they give me hope that my books will find new homes with other readers who’ll appreciate them — and I’m sure other donors feel the same.
Because books perhaps more than any of our other possessions reflect how we’ve become who we are in the world, and for that reason we’re especially attached to them. Our bookshelves tell our stories.
My books at home, for example, represent my interest in all things British — history, mysteries, travel and art, while the books in my office at UMass, reflect the professor I’ve become, one who’s taught and written about journalism history, law and ethics for decades.
As I pulled books from my office shelves for this year’s sale, I was struck by how many of them had been written by my own professors at Penn State and the University of Wisconsin Madison.
The substance of those books shaped my career in the academy, but not as much as the professors themselves (mostly men back in the day), who helped me by their examples become the teacher I’ve been for 33 years at UMass.
I like to think that a browser at this year’s sale might find my copy of the biography of First Amendment scholar Zachariah Chafee by Don Smith, who’s described on the book jacket in only one sentence as an associate professor at Penn State.
But because I was his student, I know the rest of the story: how he left his wife and two daughters in their State College apartment every summer and traveled to Boston to spend weeks painstakingly reading Chafee’s papers in the archives at Harvard’s law school. He made that trip year after year, staying in modest accommodations and spending every possible minute sifting through the Chafee documents.
Through remarkable patience and persistence Prof. Smith eventually got the book written and published, but he made his real mark on me not as a researcher, but as a smart and kind teacher, one to whom you could talk when you got a shocking C on your first paper in graduate school — a grade not seen since high school home economics and never to be seen again through three graduate degrees. This was thanks in part to what he taught me about bringing that same patience and persistence to working with his students.
I found several other timely books on my shelves by Prof. Stanley Kutler at UW Madison, including The Supreme Court and the Constitution. Prof. Kutler’s eyes didn’t sparkle when he was editing that book, but they sure did when he was working with his students. The book is dedicated: “To my students; in appreciation,” and he really meant it. I learned about the Supreme Court by reading his book, but the man himself taught me that a good teacher learns from her students every day.
Harold “Bud” Nelson, who wrote several law books on my shelves, had that same look when he taught his UW seminars. He was one of the professors who taught me that a great researcher could also be a caring and thoughtful teacher.
When he retired, I asked him if he planned to continue his research: “Not as long as my health holds,” he said. He had better things to do, he said, like chop wood and stay in touch with former students, another lesson learned. (Well, not the wood chopping.)
John Harrison at Penn State wrote another of my books about a great Ohio newspaper, “The Blade of Toledo: The First 130 years.” He signed the book for my husband and me: “For Karen and Jay, two of the great all-time fans of the Blade.” Up to the moment we received the book, we had no idea we were big Blade fans, and being from Iowa and New Jersey respectively, we’d never even subscribed. But we appreciated the thought.
When I became a full-time lecturer at Penn State after earning my master’s degrees, I was the only woman on a faculty of older men. And there was no office for me, just a desk in the hall.
But Prof. Harrison, one of the most senior faculty members, had that desk pulled into his small office, where we shared space for several years. John’s sense of humor and generosity of spirit taught me much of what I needed to know to become the teacher I am — that and the example of his wife Shirley, who taught in the English Department.
Shirley also spent time in John’s office, and when her students stopped by to see her, it was clear she was interested in each of them and respected all of them — even the ones who had dropped or failed her courses. Maybe especially the ones who had dropped or failed her course. Another goal for which to strive, I thought.
And also on my shelves and headed to the League sale are several of the 35 books written by John Merrill, a professor at my undergraduate alma mater — the University of Missouri School of Journalism. I didn’t know Prof. Merrill personally then because his classes were large lectures, and, he was a legendary figure in international journalism with teaching assistants who dealt with students. (How else would he have had the time to write 35 books?)
But I knew him as a colleague in later years when I taught Missouri’s required History & Principles of Journalism course to 300 students each semester at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I used my teaching assistants to help grade, but handled all the interaction with students myself.
I was the first woman and only the third person ever to teach the course since the school’s founding in 1908, and by that time, I had enough confidence and heart — thanks in part to the professors mentioned above — to turn the fusty and fact-laden class into a history of freedom of expression, filled with the stories of women and people of color. (The only woman mentioned by my predecessor in the H&P class was Mary Paxton Keeley, the first woman graduate of the journalism school.)
I think Merrill approved, and in 2010 when he published “Viva Journalism: The Triumph of Print in the Media Revolution,” he sent me the book here at UMass, asking me “to help spread the word.”
The triumph of print may be questionable, but these books that I’ll donate to the League reminded me that the triumph of great teaching is a sure thing.
And they’re all great books in their own right, so I’m hoping when the League and the grandsons have worked their magic, this year’s book sale will be a win-win: money for the League’s good work and new homes for my books.
Karen List is a professor in the UMass Journalism Department.