Thank you, Mrs. Atwood, for believing in me

How my 10th grade English teacher changed my life

Mrs. Janet Atwood saw something in me I did not see in myself.

On morning, in the spring of his sophomore year, he sat in Mr. Bozeman's home room. He was wondering what was for lunch in the cafeteria and fretting over his sixth-period geometry test.

He had gotten his driver's license the month before. He wasn’t that cool, though. He was still driving his mother’s station wagon. 

Oh, he had discovered girls and could play the guitar. He weighed 135 pounds and smelled like Clearasil. 

It was a new school, and everyone was still learning names and trying to navigate the hallways of a brick fortress that had been built with no windows.

Someone in the front office was reading the morning announcements over the intercom. A school newspaper was being started, and the names of the editors and staff members were being read.

He heard his name called.

Wait a minute!! Who??

 Sports editor.

What??? 

He loved watching sports. He loved reading about sports. And he loved writing. But he had not applied for a position on the staff. How did this happen?

Mrs Janet Atwood was his 10th grade English teacher. Her hair had touches of gray  … teaching high school will do that to you. She had round glasses and wore braces on her teeth. He had never known an older person to have braces. He wondered if the other faculty members laughed and called her “Metal Mouth.’’

 In sophomore English, she required students to memorize “The Canterbury Tales” and recite it in Old English in front of the class. When she assigned them to read John Steinbeck's “The Grapes of Wrath’’ he mentioned that his father had migrated to California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, just like the Joad family.

His father was not able to come and speak to the class, but he recorded his presentation on a cassette tape and she played it for her students.

She got emotional when she heard his father say, “We weren’t poor. We just didn’t have any money.’’

He later found out Mrs. Atwood had been the one who had recommended him to another English teacher, who was advisor for the school newspaper, The Raiders Digest.

As sports editor, he cut his teeth under the Friday night lights and sweltering gymnasiums. He banged out a monthly sports column on an old typewriter and served as a correspondent for a local newspaper.

On another spring morning two years later, he went with the newspaper staff to the Georgia Scholastic Press Association at the University of Georgia.

At the awards ceremony in the crowded auditorium at Park Hall, he heard his name called again. He had won first place in sports writing for the entire state.

Years later, after he married and became a dad, he went to see Mrs. Atwood. She was in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. 

He caught her up on about his newspaper career. She told him how proud she was of him. She died not long after his visit. 

As a writer, he covered the Olympics, the World Series, the Masters golf tournament and the Super Bowl. He wrote nine books, was named Georgia Author of the Year and was nominated for a Grammy in the “Spoken Word” category.

In 2010, he was the recipient of  the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. And last month, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

One of his regrets in life is she never got to see any of it.

She recognized something in him he did not see in himself. 

But that’s what teachers do.

Thank you, Mrs. Atwood, for believing in me.

And just so you’ll know, I became a teacher, too.