"An Unforgettable
Gift"
by
Dr. Wallace
Daniel
Dr. Ralph Lynn Memorial Service
First Baptist Church; Waco, Texas
July 13, 2007
On the very first page of Ken Bain’s
recent book on great teachers in the United States, What the Best
College Teachers Do, in fact, in the first sentence of the book, Dr.
Ralph Lynn’s name is cited. He tells us what we at Baylor have known for
a long time. Bain spends most of the first two pages talking about Dr.
Lynn. He quotes former Texas governor Ann Richards, who wrote that Dr.
Lynn’s classes “offered us a window to the world, and for a young girl
from Waco, his classes were great adventures.” They were, she said, like
“magical tours into the great minds and movements of history.” Bain also
cites author Robert Fulghum, who claimed that “Ralph Lynn is the best
teacher in the world.”
To those of us who have had the privilege of knowing Dr. Lynn, of taking
his classes, of being his colleagues, of being in his presence, know
that we have been given a great gift, an unforgettable gift. At Baylor
University, the number of lives he has touched, the people he has
inspired, the students who have gone on to become leaders, would be
difficult to count or to measure, but one can say, without exaggeration,
their number is enormous. He truly opened up the world, served as the
gatekeeper to a much wider, deeper world than we knew existed, and he
did it in so many different ways: in the famous trips he and Bob Reid
led of students to Europe at a time when few students had ever been
abroad, in his passion for ideas and for books, in the intimidating
vocabulary tests he gave on the first day of class, in the life-long
lessons he gave on how to read a book, how to take it apart, how to
review it, in his refusal to accept unexamined ideas, in his voracious
reading, in his care for students as learners and as people, in his
hearty laugh, and in such pithy statements as “There is no good
substitute for brains.”
As a teacher but also as a person, Dr. Lynn invited us to see our own
stories anew. He helped us delight in the beauty of language, encouraged
us not to take ourselves too seriously, to enjoy the common, everyday
beauty of the world. He powerfully evoked those lessons himself—in his
delight in people, in simple conversations, in telling stories. Perhaps
most of all he was down-to-earth, welcoming, hospitable. And these
qualities he exemplified everyday—in an office whose door was never
closed, in his homecoming receptions, in his love of sports, especially
Baylor sports, in his love of tools, and in his refusal never to stop
learning.
Winston Churchill said that “all the great things are simple, and many
can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy,
hope.” All of these words exemplify Dr. Lynn as a teacher and a person.
His kind will not soon come our way again.
