Having worked with Betty Lou for eighteen years, from 1983-2001, I have memories of her beyond number. Clearly, so do many others, including Betty Lou’s students over thirty years who have stepped forward, after several decades of Betty Lou’s image still burning bright, to honor her.  Let me begin with first impressions, back in 1983.  I came to interview on a chill early March day.  Perhaps because it was only a week or so until Spring vacation, things seemed a bit frazzled, from the Headmaster’s secretary who forgot why I’d come, who I was and so on, to the Headmaster, who had a full docket and yet, as Dick Dolven could do, gave me his full, laser-focused attention for 15 minutes or so before sending me down the steps and up into Whitson Hall to meet Mrs. Blumberg.  Even though the new Swain library looked nearly complete, there were signs of a school still in formation, especially the “temporary science building” that had been parked for some fifteen years in the Hall Street lot.  And Whitson Hall, orange-paneled then instead of white, didn’t exactly sing hosannahs to me as I passed through the doors and down an indistinct hallway to room 23. 

Then, things changed.  The welcome I received from Betty Lou was kind, if brief, because class was beginning-- AP English Lit, in fact, and it took about two minutes for the class to lock into what this vibrant, talented communicator had to offer.  It may have been Anna Karenina, as I recall it, Betty Lou had no fear of tossing Tolstoy, Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Ibsen or Shaw at her students because she knew that the depths of these “zenith tracts” could pull anyone in, if opened up carefully, little by little, with no early barrage at students who were still lowering themselves into the plot.  What was important, clearly, to Betty Lou was presenting the early scenes as if that were all that any reader could possibly know of, now.  Patience, patience, I could almost hear her say, “I must only talk about what we’ve read so far.”  Behavior and speech clues were already popping up, in the early chapters, and what did they portend?  What wisps of foreshadowing clouds were already visible?  What hard or charitable heart was already exposing itself?  Under the typical bustle and bombast, what small voice was struggling to be heard?  To someone with the characteristic patience of a hockey player, I had some lessons to learn, clearly, about how to unpack literature slowly, temperately, just as each assignment was read each day. 

I can’t tell you the effect this had on me—who’d taught English overseas and was hoping that native speakers might be a little easier to connect with, having preconceptions that I at least knew something about.  When I was offered a job a few weeks later, I was ready to roll.  I knew somehow that this gracious, dedicated woman had lots to show me about how to turn a classroom into a cohort that featured lots of speaking roles in class discussion each day. It was Betty Lou’s empathetic, candid, unhurried sharing of her thoughts about the text (and parallel life situations) that made it so easy for students to buy in. She purposely left spaces after questions so that students could chime in.  Little did I know how many years it would take me to get my classes running at anything approaching Betty Lou’s steady, rolling tempo.

Generally, of course, we fellow English teachers most often saw Betty Lou, our Department Chair, between classes, or at department meetings.  Here are some informal memories of Betty Lou:

1.   Primarily, within the confines of Whitson Hall second floor, Betty Lou’s prime means of locomotion was running.  I was never sure when that started or why, but over the course of her thirty years at the school, assuming that this running began early on as she passed say, five or six times a day to the mimeo/Xerox machine, saving perhaps fifteen seconds each way during 165 days a year over 30 years, Betty Lou was able to save 13,613 minutes, that’s 227 hours, in fact, that could be invested directly into her daily work and time with students.  If that isn’t going the extra mile, I’m not sure what is.

2.   While there was a lot of tolerance in Betty Lou’s daily mien, including forgiveness of small slights, she was troubled over her years as department chair with members of the department who taught texts as if by rote, without making much of an emotional investment in the work—or, as follows, the students either.  If you taught with passion the works on your syllabus, Betty Lou could forgive a small suitcase full of venial sins, such as taking too long to get papers graded, or neglecting to teach as much grammar as was mandated on the grade-level curriculum.  We had a colleague who taught in the eighth grade who could motivate kids to invest themselves in such heady YA fare as Catcher In the Rye and Lord of the Flies even though he passed papers back irregularly, as the mood struck him. Yet, he was a good booster for the school, a spirit voice, and he could cope with the middle school horde, which could be mercurial and tough on each other, as was nationally documented.  One day when Betty Lou was visiting him in his classroom about something or other, however, she spotted a copy of the hated, dreaded, reviled Cliff’s Notes-- cheat-sheet plot digests in those pre-internet days-- on his desk, and a rebuke was issued—at least, according to reports.   Losing Betty Lou’s respect was a hard blow to swallow because normally it was so trustfully given, and nice to count on, and it seemed to made some sense when our colleague jumped ship in June, joining a family business back home.

3.    The lodestar in Betty Lou’s Hamden Hall constellation was undoubtedly the Upper School literary magazine, FACES, that she mentored through its infancy into a full, vibrant maturity.  Today on FACES sails, very much in the same format that Betty Lou and her first student groups devised, with student poetry and prose nicely surrounded by the best artwork from the top artists in the Upper School.  A highlight of Betty Lou’s nurturing of FACES was the annual Spring Poetry/Prose Reading, featuring 12-18 student readers and sometimes a faculty member or two, including Betty Lou, that was held in lamplight, as I recall, in Swain Library.  Several members of the FACES board would each volunteer to bring a standing lamp from home (hopefully they made it back home in one piece), to allow mellow lamplight to cast shadows around the room.  Up at the podium stood one shy lass or quaking lad at a time, often reading too fast in their yearning to escape the spotlight, but nevertheless listening to their own words cast out amid a reverent throng.  It was an atmosphere that Betty Lou created, more than anyone, for it hasn’t been the same since.  Did I mention that the staff baked and punch was served?  Compliments were offered freely after the readings as we milled around—for many people could have showed up, perhaps, but it was this self-selected crew that had arrived, had faced their demons, public speaking being ranked by Time Magazine circa 1994, you may remember, as a greater fear to many people than death.  Well, no one fainted, even, though there were a few perspirers, and it’s a sure bet that many readers who weren’t yet articulate as Sophomores or even as Juniors found a surer voice each year that they read, learning to cadence their speech and emphasize emotive keys, carrying their writing along.

Yet, how can one person measure the success of Betty Lou Blumberg, consummate teacher and ever-supportive mentor to legions of students and a dozen or two younger faculty?  Accuracy would suggest math and statistics, which we English types get blinded by.  If, as Mr. Dolven used to say, “We teach ourselves,” Betty Lou brought a lot of herself to class each day.  There was always a smoothness of presentation in her steady voice and patient demeanor that channeled and directed her impassioned sense that literature was indeed, as Lionel Trilling once said, “an instrument of life.”  What one might learn from a great book could, indeed, save one a lot more than time—in a time of upheaval, a time of crisis, it might even save your life.  If, as Marianne Moore famously said, “great literature features imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” it’s very possible that Betty Lou’s offering of visionary messages from the great classics, from Chaucer and Hamlet to Dickens to Faulkner, may have helped whole rows of her students to avoid some very real toads indeed. Equally true, of course, is that love, endurance, joy and tenderness gain from their exposure to threats that would undermine them, shining ever brighter—and this Betty Lou taught her students as well, showing them the sun fields following every storm-- book-ending every storm, in fact. After all, what’s life without the drama that impels it forward?  As for her colleagues here over the span of her career, I can only speak for myself in saying, simply enough, that it was her caring about matters great and small, and always and foremost the people around her, a team player among teammates, most of whom were her students, that has kept her presence alive on Second Floor Whitson and across the school, dulcet voice thrilling still to a line of poetry, or a flourish of descriptive power.  The fact that she’s still teaching (at Quinnipiac) and looks about a year older than when she left will always be, I’ll say, anything but a surprise.   It makes sense, doesn’t it, that pursuing new thoughts everyday might be the best youth serum yet to appear.