Theresa Cloer helped get me where I am today.
Not that I’m blaming her for that, you understand.
There I was, a junior at a suburban Texas high school with delusions of writerhood. I had (successfully) submitted some poetry to the school newspaper, the Scroll, and Cloer suggested that I join the staff of Quadrus, the barely-out-of-diapers campus literary publication.
I did, and then she suggested that I try out for the yearbook staff. So in the spring of the year, I received a nice little note — which I still have stashed away — that I would be part of the Valhalla staff the next fall. (In what a local talk-radio host used to call a Brush With Fame, also on that staff was a lass named Laura Lane, who eventually would become actress Lauren Lane of the TV show The Nanny.)
And then the blow fell: Our teacher-sponsor, whose students had affectionately dubbed her “Darth Cloer,” left for greener pastures. No sooner had I stepped through one journalistic door than my recruiter stepped out the other.
True, our new teacher soon arrived and guided her motley crew through the year. I went on to a journalism major, two-plus decades at a couple of newspapers and now other horizons. But it was an interesting prelude to a career.
I read in the July 21 Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the college yearbook is facing a cloudy future. Writer John Austin reports that the 2008 Aerie will be the last for the University of North Texas; the story is the same at Mississippi State and Purdue.
I must admit that I carry no particular torch for collegiate yearbooks. (I bought all of my high school annuals but none from my university.) But I think that Kansas State yearbook adviser Kathy Lawrence had a point in Austin’s story: “They’re losing the only written history of the year prepared by the students who lived it.”
P.S. — Dear Mrs. Cloer: I’m still glad that you recruited me.
Yeah, I had her too. She was a very big influence on me. I remember driving with her to Ft. Worth with paste-ups of the Scroll (as you called it) for printing. Where is she now? I’d like to thank her…
Comment by David Snavely — November 2, 2008 @ 11:02 pm |
I have no idea! Nothing very helpful shows up on Google. I am still in intermittent touch with some of my old yearbook-staff colleagues, but they have not mentioned being in contact with her.
Comment by alancochrum — November 3, 2008 @ 10:18 am |
Alan,
What a wonderful comment! I’ve bookmarked your blog and will keep up with you. One of the things that happens to you as a teacher is that you learn much more than you ever teach.
You write wonderfully! Thanks for the nice post about me.
Best always,
Theresa Cloer Kushner
Comment by Theresa Kushner — August 25, 2009 @ 10:42 am |