ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160018
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: TRACY GALLIMORE STAFF WRITER
English professor Barbara Ewell is giving away her books. It's a lot like freeing balloons, she says. "You don't know where they'll end up."
As the fall semester came to a close last month, Ewell retired, ending 26 years of teaching at Radford University.
"I didn't really start learning until I started teaching," Ewell said of her first few years at RU.
She almost didn't get that chance.
Despite her good grades, Ewell, who contracted polio as a child and lost the use of her arms, was turned down the first time she applied for the teacher's education program at Memphis State, now the University of Memphis.
She remembers the day it happened.
"I walked into a big room where grandfatherly men were sitting around a gleaming conference table. I came forward and one administrator smiled benevolently at me. He then explained that with my disability, teaching would be too demanding, too tiring for me. And they felt that I wouldn't be able to handle discipline problems with students.
"I could see that the man genuinely felt he was doing me a service. I just couldn't believe how such cruel words could come from such a kind face. He never made eye contact with me, even when he said, 'We just think this is for your own good.'"
Today, Ewell can smile at that. "Clearly, they wanted to protect me from the wilds of public education," she said.
But at the time, she went, heartsick, to seek solace from one of her professors. "Once I'd finished crying, she looked at me and said, 'Well, now this."' We practiced that sentence over and over, until I could say it dry-eyed."
A week or so later, Ewell again found herself standing in the big room. "This time they told me 'we've decided to allow you to try student teaching in spite of our reservations.'"
Soon, she was teaching eighth- and ninth-graders at Memphis' Hume High, Elvis Presley's old high school. "The ninth-graders were very well-mannered but the eighth-graders were hellions. ... We got along fine though, once they got to know me."
And so it has been ever since.
Especially at Radford University, where Ewell has served as faculty president, interim chairwoman of the English department, and adviser to the student newspaper.
Along with her regular teaching, Ewell has worked as an advocate for students with handicaps. Students with learning disabilities - bright as anyone else but with learning differences - soon became her largest group. Eventually, a staff position was created and Disabled Student Services evolved. Now, at the beginning of the semester, students meet with their professors to make them aware of their disabilities and to arrange special accommodations.
Charity Henderson of Norfolk graduated in December with a bachelor's degree in English. She has dyslexia, a learning difference that causes her to reverse letters and creates problems with spelling.
"When I saw Dr. Ewell for the first time, I was surprised," Henderson said. "I wasn't accustomed to having a teacher with a disability. The minute she began to speak to the class, though, I forgot about it. She has this candor about her, a warmth and a friendliness."
At the time, Ewell was teaching grammar and language for teachers, a make-or-break-you course.
"I walked in shaking, but I made it through," Henderson said. "Dr. Ewell would meet with me outside of class ... to make sure I understood the material."
As the semester ended, two students stopped by Ewell's office to turn in their final exams. They paused for a moment to talk about their professor.
"Dr. Ewell has a way of explaining the material so you grasp things that would otherwise be very hard to understand," said LaConda Bowe, a sophomore from Danville.
Laura Breeding, an English major from Roanoke, agreed. "She has this way of knowing by glancing at your face if you are getting the idea. If she sees a blank look, she'll stop talking, smile, and just ask, 'What don't you understand, Laura?' She is very aware of the fact that people don't learn the same way or at the same speed."
After she retires, Ewell will spend much of her time writing. "For the past 26 years, I've mostly been teaching, grading papers, seeing students, serving on 4,328 committees - like everyone else," she said. "I've never been able to rub my stomach and pat my head like some of my colleagues do when they write and teach at the same time."
Ewell says she's written poetry and prose during the summers.
"But mostly," she said, "I've taught."
Ewell sees differences between students today and those she taught 20 years ago.
Today, "people are more willing to take a leadership role," she said. "Students speak up, express ideas and opinions."
Students of the '90s are "much more interested in the social and human interaction in literature. In the '70s, people were accustomed to analyzing literature. The concern was with style and words."
Ewell has seen big changes in approaches to teaching, too.
"I remember the first two years I taught. As I talked, my students would dutifully take notes and my words would come back, nearly verbatim, in neatly penned essays at exam time."
Lectures are rare nowadays, replaced by open discussions.
"There are a lot of ways to bring literature to life," Ewell said.
Radford's Service-Learning Center, for example, gets students involved in projects that link life experience to literary works.
"We read Steinback and Faulkner, but we've probably lived very different lives than their characters so it may be difficult to relate to their stories. When you get out there and build a house with Habitat for Humanity for a family who has never had a home, what you've read becomes much more real."
With her retirement, Ewell will move to Conway, Ark., where she will be closer to her parents, both 81, and her brother, nephews and nieces.
She said her health is the main reason for leaving the university and that a buyout package offered this fall "comes at a very good time."
Last summer, after a viral infection, Ewell developed post-polio syndrome, an illness that can cause additional weakening in limbs. The fatigue she experienced fall semester was the deciding factor when it came to the buyout. "Several times, my legs collapsed after I had been standing for a long while," she said. "But the condition will be manageable with rest."
While she's resting, Ewell plans to publish "Bridge Stories," a collection of five short stories she's written that center around Radford's Memorial Bridge.
She plans to do some of the writing she didn't do while she was committed to her first love, teaching.
"I'll miss her terribly," said Parks Lanier, chairman of the university's English Department. "She was here when I came and I haven't known this department without her."
Joyce Graham, an associate English professor, visited during some of Ewell's final office hours.
"I think you are great, Barbara Ewell. And I'll miss you more than you can imagine!"
The women exchanged a big hug and some talk about the retirement package.
"There's a party at my house so this ain't goodbye!" Graham said.
"I know it," Ewell replied. "'Cause I don't do windows and I don't do goodbyes."
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Retiring English Professor Barbara Ewell: In retirementby CNBshe hopes to spend much of her time writing. "For the past 26 years,
I've mostly been teaching, grading papers, seeing students, serving
on 4,328 committees."