Ken Macrorie

So sorry to hear about Dr. Macrorie. I would never have known what 'fabulous reality' was if I hadn't met Ken at Western Michigan in the early 70's. What a positive impact he had on so many people's lives.

I have just learned about Ken's death from Bread Loaf School of English director, Jim Maddox. While at B.L. in the 80's, I took two of Ken's courses and, like many others who studied with him, counted him as a friend. By turns, Ken encouraged and cajoled his students to become better writers, and nobody was better at pinpointing, with very few words, the central deficit in any piece. Beyond that, however, Ken was a great teacher because he taught "the whole adult." He was famous at B.L....

Ken Macrorie was an original in every sense of the word; he opened me to new ways of teaching and learning with my students. He is one of the greats in English education, and I am truly sorry to think that he is no longer with us.

Dr. Macrorie had a profound effect on my life. Until I took a class from him at WMU, I was a science major, looking toward a life in the laboratory. His influence moved me from the "dark side," and I became an English teacher and later, a professor myself. True to his dedication to his students, he stayed in some contact with many of us over the years, and continued to be our teacher. He actually "fussed" at me a few years ago because I insisted on "telling" him about things I was doing,...

I want to write a second message about Ken because his obituary and guest-book entries mention what he did for teachers and students. I always thought, and still think of myself as his student, both in learning to teach and learning to write, although I never studied with him formally in a class. I only talked with him face-to-face two times: first at Bread Loaf towards the end of the summer in 1993, and a few years later during a week's visit with him and Joyce in Santa Fe. He was my teacher...

I was at Bread Loaf in 1985 and took a class right across the hall from a class he was teaching. I found his students eager to get to class and share with him. I wish I could have taken a class with him but I've read "Twenty Teachers" and use his approach to the I-Search paper in my classes. His work will live on.

John Callaghan
Clinton Township, MI

Ken put the I, the personal narrative voice, back into writing, freeing tens of thousands of students thereby to express their unique experiences, their individuality, in their prose. Those emancipated personal voices also enabled readers to enjoy once again what they were reading, to participate through the words of others in the ongoing human comedy.

Though Ken will be deeply missed, his voice, his writing, will live on.

I will miss knowing Ken is "out there." I met him in the early '70s at the University of Missouri, brought him to Iowa repeatedly, and - as did many others - maintained an NCTE convention relationship through the years. Breakfast chat's with Ken and Jim Moffett remain especially memorable. He contributed greatly to our shared profession and society. Thank you for sharing him with us.

With sympathy and best wishes to Ken's family, and with thanks for all that he did for writers, teachers, and students, and for the wonderful writing he has left us.
Ed Daring, So. burlington, VT