CTE Newsletter - Sep/Oct 2003 (Vol 16, No 1)
ISU Teachers Remembered: Lee Hadley
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| Author Lee Hadley |
As part of its tenth anniversary celebration, the CTE is inaugurating a series on ISU faculty who have been influential, or inspirational, for a new generation of instructors at ISU. To begin the series, Associate Professor Fern Kupfer, English, remembers one of her favorite ISU teachers, the late Lee Hadley.
Participants in one of this fall's CTE Teaching and Learning Circles will read about a favorite teacher in Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie. To register for this Circle, contact cte@iastate.edu or 4-2906. You can also read more about alumni and their favorite teachers on the Iowa State Alumni page.
I met Lee Hadley when I was a graduate student at Iowa State thirty years ago. She was much younger than I am now, but silver-haired even then - and joyful. She had the kind of face that looked as if she could cause some mischief. She was wiry and energetic and wore ski sweaters - and so my first impression was that she was an athletic, wholesome type. That impression was wrong. Lee smoked and drank too much, loved crossword puzzles and eating out, and especially loved good talk. Good talk - that was a passion we both shared.
When I was beginning my own writing career, I audited Lee's class in magazine writing - a class I now teach. She team-taught with her writing partner, Annabelle Irwin. Together they were like a good vaudeville act: interrupting each other, finishing each other's sentences. Lee sat cross-legged on the desk, embellishing stories with great detail; Annabelle played the straightman, correcting Lee's narratives.
| "Her generosity extended to the students she taught. She liked students. Really liked them." |
I received my first writing "contract" - an article for Redbook magazine - during that semester. Lee showed off the contract in class, hugged me, took me out to lunch the next day. As soon as I was published, Lee saw me as a "real writer." For years after, whenever I gave a guest lecture in the magazine class, Lee insisted on paying me. "You're a professional now," she said.
Her generosity extended to the students she taught. I think she gave more independent studies than any other professor in the English department. She liked students. Really liked them. She called them pet names: dearheart, my love, kiddo. (She could get away with it because of the silver hair.) Lee preferred teaching undergraduates: she felt they did not take creative writing with such high seriousness. Lee was professional but decidedly unprofessorial. Everyone called her Lee. Few people knew that she had published more than a dozen books, that after she died, the headline in the New York Times obituary described her as a "beloved" writer.
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| One of many children's books Hadley and Irwin penned together. |
As a teacher, Lee was inspirational, encouraging, and always, always kind. This is important when you're dealing with young people who pour their hearts into a story. It's different for a professor teaching organic chemistry or statistics. Your students aren't invested so personally in the work they share with you.
I remember once standing outside Lee's office - early for a lunch date - and listening to her critique a story with a student. Heads together, they were deciding possible endings. You could try this . . . or you could try this, Lee was saying with grand enthusiasm. "Oh, that would be terrific," she said when he offered an alternative. She seemed riveted by the work. I recall the student's face when he was leaving: pleased and excited to begin his revision. So hopeful. "You can do it," she called after him. "Good luck!" Later, when I asked Lee about his writing, she confessed that it wasn't anything special. "But you never know . . . " she added playfully.
Hadley Irwin (the name under which Lee and Annabelle Irwin published) wrote "problem books" for young adults - their characters saw racism, injustice, and abuse. But there was always humor and warmth in the stories. In an interview for the Young Adult Journal, Lee said: "Our notion is this. . . we know it, but we don't know if the kids know it. . . that no matter how awful it is for a moment or a day, for a week or for a year, no matter if your world is crumbling underneath you. . . life is still going on around you. And there are still, always, things to laugh at, to laugh about. I guess we believe in hope, and I think that's one of the things we try to show in our books." She lived this in her teaching, too.