When I was growing up, I never imagined that my livelihood would come from the printed word. My ambition was to go into medicine—heart surgery, to be specific. That was my go-to answer, anyway, whenever an adult asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I can still remember how impressed they always were by my response. How I ended up earning my living not by cracking chests but by crafting sentences can be explained in part by the fact that I never had a burning desire to be a surgeon to begin with. In truth, I wasn’t entirely sure back then what I wanted to do with my life. But that was before I had the good fortune of encountering someone who would alter my path forever—my high school English teacher, Aurelia Valley.
Miss Valley was what many people back then called a "spinster” and what some today might refer to as a "Big Beautiful Woman", only without the "beautiful" part. Her dark hair was short and styled in an outdated bob. She wore plain, flat-soled shoes, thin wire-rimmed glasses, and house dresses that hung on her girthy frame like potato sacks. Her small, upturned nose had a piggish quality, and I remember her breathing mostly through her mouth. Smiling didn’t seem to be in her repertoire. Some of her less-kind students would mock her appearance. Full disclosure: I probably did too at times, if only to fit in with the crowd.
The small high school I attended could best be described as blue-collar. We had no honors classes, though our football team was always formidable. Few students went on to four-year colleges. The most common path for graduates was to get a steady job—often at places like the post office. The classics—Shakespeare, Beowulf, The Last of the Mohicans—were not exactly subjects that bedazzled the majority of my bored, unmotivated classmates. But that didn’t stop Miss Valley. She possessed the two essentials of every great instructor: she knew her stuff, and she was deeply passionate about it.
One day during the spring semester of my senior year, after the bell rang and everybody spilled out of her classroom like it was on fire, as they always did, Miss Valley asked me to stay behind for a few minutes. I froze. What would my friends think? That Miss Valley had a thing for me? I wanted desperately to get out of there, but she had positioned herself in front of the exit, effectively blocking my escape. “You should think about being a writer,” she said. “You have an aptitude for it.”
The rest of our conversation that day has since faded into the distant, haze-gray recesses of my memory, but her advice stuck with me. It was the first time I could recall anyone telling me I had a knack for anything other than complaining about having to do chores at home.
Fast forward a year later. I was a college freshman at a state university with a dismal 2.2 GPA. By then, I’d discovered beer and girls, and I knew that attending medical school was out of the question even if I had wanted to. As I sat in my dorm room one night, flipping through the course catalog, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, I stumbled upon the requirements for a journalism degree. In that instant, I swear I heard Miss Valley’s voice in my head as if she were standing next to me. “You should think about being a writer. You have an aptitude.”
So that’s what I did. I became a writer.
After graduation, I landed a job as a newspaper reporter in Colorado Springs. It was there that I met a smart, beautiful young woman who would later become my wife. We’ve now been happily married for over forty years. We have two grown children, three grandchildren, and a fourth on the way. We live in a lovely home by the Pacific. My career as a journalist would lead me to far-flung places, and eventually to opportunities as a screenwriter in Hollywood, as a contributor to major magazines like The Atlantic and Air & Space Smithsonian, and even to work with the CIA. My background as a reporter ultimately influenced my earning a master’s degree from Harvard University. It also played a crucial role in helping me land a publishing deal, which led to the release in 2012 of Flat Spin, the first book in my best-selling Cordell Logan mystery series. The seventh book in the series, Deep Fury, will be out in December.
None of this would’ve been possible without Miss Valley, who saw potential in one of her students, took the time to pull him aside, and encouraged him to become a writer.
Aurelia Valley passed away in 1996. I regret that I never took the opportunity to thank her for the role she played in my life. I hope this serves as a small tribute to her legacy.
Thank you, Miss Valley. For everything.
***
David Freed is an instrument-rated pilot, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and author of the Cordell Logan mystery series. He teaches creative writing to graduate students at Harvard University’s Extension School. 
No comments:
Post a Comment