Alex Revell

Every morning when we came into class, first class of the day, Mr.
Revell had already been there for an hour. The blackboards, front and
side, were completely covered in sentences written in his tidy cursive
script. These were our sentences, taken from the last writing
assignment. You scanned them anxiously to see if your sentence was
among them, and if so, whether it was on the board because it
contained some kind of instructive mistake, or because it was a
particularly shining example of great prose. The mixture of dread and
pride always brought up the adrenaline upon entering that room--better
than the acid coffee on offer in the dining hall (do they still offer
that, I expect not). And the fact that the analysis of the sentences
would be left up to us, as a class, and only afterward commented on by
Mr. Revell. I think this was the single most effective (and dramatic)
pedagogic tool I have ever experienced in all my education (including
college and graduate school). Revell was a canny, down-to-earth
presence. Not a whiff of pretense about the man. Yet as solid and
incisive as he was, he was also ultimately warm and forgiving. I'll
never forget my boneheaded failure to interpret "When in eternal lines
to time thou growest" from a Shakespearean sonnet in the culminating
test of the semester, and how he corrected, yet gave it insignificant
weight in the grade. We all have these lacunae that can be quite
embarrassing, particularly as we are learning, which he understood.
Ever grateful for the privilege of learning from him and in feeling
that in him I had a very wise and supportive friend.