Terry
Woster
Teacher's
last word
still heard
Lesson still fresh
after 24 years
My hand shook as I held out the grade sheet. "Mr. Phillips, I'm graduating tomorrow. I can't have six hours of "D" on my final grades. Not in journalism. Can't you give me an incomplete? I can take summer school and finish the work."
Across the wide oak desk, George Phillips leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. He chewed his lower lip and slowly shook his head.
"I can't do that," he said. "You knew about the assignments the first day of the semester, and five feature stories are missing."
I took a breath.
"But, sir, three other guys got incompletes for the same thing. I'd do the work. Really. I can't take a 'D' on six credits my senior year in my major."
HE LEANED forward and pointed a long finger at me.
"Listen," he said, shaking his finger close to my face. "The others don't graduate until January. They can make it up.
"You're something else. I know you'd do the work and probably a pretty good job of it, too. But you had a chance. You spent your college career missing deadlines and forgetting assignments and making excuses, and it's time to grow up. Not everyone you meet from now on will give you a second chance, and I'm not going to, either."
That meeting 24 years ago played like a tape in my memory Friday as I read George Phillips' obituary in the morning paper.I could still feel the perspition soaking my shirt,
hear the clatter of the AP teletype machine far off down the hall, see the shaft of sunlight that spilled over Phillip's gray hair, cut short and thick as a clothesbrush.
He was dean of Journalism at South Dakota State for most of 30 years, retiring in 1973.
HE FAVORED gray suits and starched, snow-white shirts, often set off by a bright, dotted bow tie. The conservative suits and colorful bow ties were a style copied by the rest of the J-school's 1960s staff.
In the classroom, Phillips was all motion, pacing like a caged wolf across the front of the room, punctuating his lectures on libel law or privacy rights by waving his arms and rubbing his close-cropped hair.
When he was excited, making a key point about printing profits versus circulation income or answering a question about writing for magazines, his voice often rose an octave. He'd sometimes squeal a few words before stopping in mid-sentence as if he'd surprised even himself.
He could be stubborn, I learned the spring afternoon when I tried to get him to give me one last break. After he said there'd be no second chance on my 'D', I pleaded for a few minutes. He wouldn't budge.
I LEFT the building and walked across the campus green to the union, angry, hurt and embarrassed at the prospect of finishing my journalism education with such a miserable grade.
Years later, I realized that he'd hit me squarely between the eyes. I had dogged my way through school, making ex- cuses and wheedling second chances from far too many decent professors. I hadn't grown up a bit. I showed little sign of starting.
Phillips was one of the first persons to tell me those things about my behavior. I needed to hear it then, as I've needed to hear it many times since.
Reading his obituary Friday, I heard the message again, as clearly as if he were speaking from just across the desk.
