Hidden Brain XX
[0] Hi there, Shankar here.
[1] We're about to celebrate Thanksgiving in the U .S. and we thought we'd mark the moment with a question.
[2] Who are you most grateful for?
[3] Maybe it's a family member or a dear friend, or maybe it's a stranger who helped you in a moment of crisis.
[4] Our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero, is all about stories of people like this.
[5] Thanksgiving happens once a year.
[6] Please subscribe to my unsung hero so you can feel the warm glow of Thanksgiving every week of the year.
[7] Today's story comes from Tony Ludlow.
[8] When Tony was in eighth grade at a school in Fort Smith, Arkansas, he had an English teacher named Cecil Holman.
[9] She was the first black woman he had ever had as a teacher.
[10] In fact, she was the first black woman with whom he'd ever had a conversation.
[11] She left such an impression on him that he still vividly remembers what she looked like.
[12] She was immaculately dressed and she wore kind of large floral print dresses.
[13] Everything about her said class and dignity and she had a particular perfume that she wore that just seemed to fit.
[14] That spring, she began to teach the class about poetry.
[15] And I started to tank.
[16] I hated it.
[17] His grades were falling.
[18] So Mrs. Holman told him he had to stay after school to get extra help.
[19] And I didn't like Mrs. Holman.
[20] I hated her for keeping me from being able to play sports.
[21] And so I was angry at her.
[22] Well, one day I said, I was just fed up.
[23] And I said, Mrs. Holman, I don't relate to any of this stuff.
[24] Poetry is stuff like girls would write.
[25] It's about daffodils and butterflies and stuff like that.
[26] unicorns.
[27] I don't relate to any of this stuff and I am sure that none of the male members of my family have any use for poetry.
[28] So the next day I had to go back to her class again and she handed me a book and she said, I want you to take this book and I put a bookmark in there and I want you to go home.
[29] I want you to read this poem and then, and this was on a Monday.
[30] Then on Friday, I want you to tell me what the poem was about.
[31] Well, I hated the whole idea.
[32] And so I reluctantly went home and opened the book to read Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
[33] And it changed my life.
[34] And she started to give me more poems like that.
[35] I read Invictus and If and and Dulce at Decoramest and poems written by men about the lives that they were living, and it just absolutely changed my life.
[36] At the end of the school year, she went around the classroom and shook everyone's hand and said good luck next year and all of those things.
[37] And then when she came to me, she took my hand and she leaned in forward real close to me, and she said, Tony Ludlow, I expect greatness from you.
[38] And I had never heard anybody challenge me with that kind of thing in my whole life.
[39] Fast forward, after 10 years in the Marine Corps, I went to college when I was a double major in English and history.
[40] I majored in English because of Mrs. Holman.
[41] I never got a chance to tell her any.
[42] of these things.
[43] She passed away.
[44] The year I graduated from high school, I never knew it.
[45] I didn't know about her passing.
[46] But years later, many years later, in fact, just a few years ago, I connected with her niece, and we have become family.
[47] Sherry Tolliver is her name, and Sherry and I have become family because we both love Mrs. Cecil Holman, my eighth grade English.
[48] English teacher, my unsung hero.
[49] Tony Ludlow of Memphis, Tennessee.
[50] He went on to become a teacher of American history in English, and he taught for almost 20 years.
[51] For many more stories like this, be sure to follow our sister podcast, My Unsung Hero.
[52] I'm Shankar Vedantam.
[53] See you soon.