My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I am creating a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers. I am bringing his colleagues and others into the conversation as well.  In this post, I share the text of Ron Hadfield's remarks from the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, at the University Church of Christ, Abilene, TX.

Fourth Post: Ron Hadfield's Remarks at Dr. Charlie Marler's Celebration of Life Service, June 1, 2022

By Ron Hadfield Dr. Charlie Marler shared my father’s first name and like him, married a girl from western Kentucky. They didn’t know each other in the 1930s, but Peggy Lucille Gambill of Fulton and Margaret Ann Pullen of Farmington grew up just 21 miles from one another, and were cut in many ways from the same cloth.​ Dr. Charlie Marler was Regina Burns' former Communication Law professor and mentor. ​I have always said that the toughest editor in the Marler house wore a skirt to church on Sunday mornings. It’s true, you know. I saw it on the marked-up papers our son brought home from elementary school, which made him groan

Ron Hadfield Download the .PDF from the memorial service Cover of the program for the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, in Abilene, TX. and his parents smile. ​His teacher, Peggy, was an uncompromising editor, but a loving one, and one of Tanner’s earliest encouragers that he become a writer, which he has.

The Marlers shared Charlie’s 89th home-cooked birthday lunch with me last month, a feast including two of his favorites: barbeque pork ribs and a decadent chocolate cake. The conversation was candid and comforting, and it reminded me of moments years ago around the same table between this college student and two of the most godly people I’ve ever known.

Charlie Marler was my college professor, my professional mentor and my Texas Father, and not always in that order. I did not aspire to be a college professor, but in most other ways, my journalistic apple, so to speak, did not fall far from his tree.

By task and by default, we have found ourselves serving as unofficial historians for Abilene Christian, for a combined total of more than 100 years, a number I have a hard time grasping. 

That’s a privilege and a responsibility we enjoyed but took seriously: a blessing with, at times, a heavy yoke. In short, we learn about our shared alma mater, store the facts where others can hopefully find them later, and tell stories about its people and moments that matter most. 

​​Together, we have worked across the street at a place where the late, great academic dean Walter H. Adams once said he was a member of the church, at the institution where he was worth more to the church than anywhere else. We saw our work that way, as mission and vocation.

For just short of 40 years, I have had the often unenviable task of proofing and editing the best editor I knew. 

Early on, I felt like the relief pitcher waiting in the bullpen to follow Mariano Rivera, the nearly infallible and eventual Baseball Hall of Fame closer who wrapped up wins for the New York Yankees: When Mariano and Charlie were through being great at what they do, there was not much meat left on the proverbial barbeque pork rib.

Even at the end of his eighth decade, Charlie could work circles around most people half his age. His work ethic, like my own parents, has been an inescapable inheritance. Before his stroke and fall last week, he likely was online, at age 89, researching something to benefit his latest project for me or his own interest on ACU’s behalf.

Over time, kinks began to show in his armor, thanks to failing vision, a slightly leaky memory and the challenge of keeping up with "Associated Press Stylebook" editors who changed their mind on punctuation and usage like most of us change our socks. 

But he genuinely appreciated the extra set of eyes I brought to our relationship, and we regularly exchanged drafts of our work. I sought his counsel on difficult days, and he always wanted to know what was new in my world. Over time, my professor became my teammate and confidant. 
​
​He never stopped being a champion of free speech yet always defended, even demanded, the truth be told as well. 

Photo courtesy of The Portal to Texas History, https://bit.ly/3zvyC5q

​Ours was not unlike the relationship I came to enjoy with the late Dr. John C. Stevens, ACU’s eighth president and another unofficial historian who spent half a century on campus as professor and administrator. The three of us collaborated on two history books, and on projects small and large, including those for an ambitious Centennial that took decades to plan, 12 months to celebrate and years to recover ​from.

The ironies never failed to awe me. Dr. Marler was the newspaper advisor and Dr. John the president during my college days and two tours of duty as editor of The Optimist. I probably kept both of them on their toes with investigative stories and youthfully enthusiastic editorials that took no prisoners. Years later, though, I found myself as Stevens’ golf partner many Saturday mornings and the rest of the time, as Charlie’s storyteller sidekick. 

Dr. John and Dr. Marler, fellow members of this church, each died in the month of May, now 15 years apart. My memories of them, like those described so eloquently by James Earl Jones in the iconic baseball film "Field of Dreams," are so thick today that I, too, have to brush them away from my face. 

​Mitch Albom, the best writer in my hometown of Detroit – and most other hometowns – wrote a top-selling book several years ago titled "Tuesdays With Morrie," a touching account of the time he spent with a beloved former college professor dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. In the final chapter, Albom asks:
​ 
Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.

​The teaching, Albom says, always goes on.

​​The last few years, I was fortunate to have regular meetings over lunch with Charlie, in addition to countless calls from his cell phone, which made me laugh because caller ID showed each to be from “Sweetwater, Texas” although he was never there. We met on other days as well, depending on Peggy’s trips to the hairdresser or lunches with her friends.

​I told myself those gatherings were my Mondays With Marler, although there was no impending health issue, only sacred time with a mentor who had increasing trouble – like many of us as we age – getting up and down from his chair. His mind was as sharp as his wit. ​

​For some reason, I had the overwhelming thought during the most recent lunch that it might be our last, and it was. That particular Monday With Marler was a bright day, the grass never greener and roses never more red outside the windows in the sun room where he worked and held court with me, and for years before, with students on Fridays in his Opinion Writing class.

Dr. John would often exclaim the words, “We shall not see his like again!” on more than one occasion about a passing dignitary or world leader, a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s famous line in Hamlet. Truer words were never spoken about each of them, as I shall not see their likes again, these two people who shaped me like no others.

With Charlie’s passing, the circle of unofficial historians for this university has become uncomfortably small. Thankfully, my life and work have been enriched by these two exacting but benevolent giants who shared their knowledge, took the time to know me and envision me at my best, and showed me the way there. 

Especially this dear man and mentor, my Texas Father, whose teaching goes on. 

Learn More:
Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon Celebrates the Life and Legacy of Dr. Charlie Marler 
​Journeying Through Grief: The Death of My Mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler

My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I am creating a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers. I am bringing his colleagues and others into the conversation as well.  In this post, I share the text of Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon's remarks from the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, at the University Church of Christ, Abilene, TX.

Third Post: Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon's Remarks at Dr. Charlie Marler's Celebration of Life Service, June 1, 2022

Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon Cover of the program for the Celebration of Life service, held June 1, 2022, in Abilene, TX. Download the .PDF from the memorial service

​By Dr. Cheryl Mann Bacon A few nights ago I was scrolling through Facebook posts by and about Dr. Marler and came across the post he wrote when I retired.  He began by recalling when we met – in the fall of 1978 – and continued to relate the details of our four-decade friendship.  Dr. Charlie Marler was Regina Burns' former Communication Law professor and mentor.

Charlie was my teacher. He chaired my master’s thesis.  He hired me to be his graduate assistant and to the JMC faculty. He was a part of the faculty I led when I succeeded him as chair. He was my elder, mentor, editor and friend.​

He concluded his post with four things he thought were important:
​• the love of civil discourse
• a passion for the First Amendment
• writing well and teaching others to write well
• and being a good mom.  

In the dozens of tributes from former students this past week, variations of those same themes emerged over and over.

Paul Anthony, a former Optimist editor who’s now a doctoral student himself, recalled a conversation in Doc’s office when he was working through his views on some difficult topics. 

He said Doc “never felt the need to make clear his own position. He knew that what I needed was an ear, not an opinion. The result was that I came away from those talks a more tolerant, more compassionate, more open-minded person.”

That was typical.  Charlie had no patience for shallow thinking, but he loved a challenging conversation with students or colleagues who might disagree with him – so long as they were thoughtful, had their facts right, and could be civil about it. 

Many students described that civility as kindness. The student who was struggling to pass received exactly the same kindness as the one he was encouraging to go to grad school, which he did frequently.

He often paraphrased Deuteronomy and said we must teach our students in the classrooms, the halls, the labs, our offices, the sidewalks, the parking lots and our homes.  His civility and kindness were like that, too.  Everywhere and at all times. 

Then there was his passion for the First Amendment.

I remember him vividly describing his visit to James Madison’s grave on the grounds of Montpelier, in Virginia.  When I had the chance to visit there a few years later and stood in that small family cemetery, I could just imagine the conversation that must have transpired in Charlie’s mind as he stood by the grave of his hero.

​Charlie understood that nothing else about our Constitutional form of government works if we fail to honor and protect those freedoms – of religion, speech, the press, and the right of the people to assemble and petition for redress of grievances.

Fact: Dr. Marler was inducted into the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association's Hall of Fame in 2003

He believed passionately that all truth is God’s truth – and if the truth is hidden or suppressed, then we cannot make informed decisions –about government, or religion, or life.  And he was all about making informed decisions.

​That passion inspired his philosophy of student journalism, which demanded absolute excellence of his students --- and occasionally drove university presidents absolutely crazy. 

​But he believed that if we want students to go out into the world prepared to speak truth to power,  well then they have to practice it -- here, now and unfettered. 

​His Optimist staffs consistently rose to the occasion because they knew he would go to the mat for them – and because disappointing him was unthinkable. 

At the heart of not disappointing Charlie was writing well. Professional journalists all over the country hear Doc’s voice in their ears when they recall that
• a lot is two words
• that and which are not interchangeable
• redundancy wastes the reader’s time
• concision doesn’t mean short – it means the shortest path to understanding
• Always cite your sources
• And my personal favorite – avoid dead construction. 

​Now, my friend Cole Bennett tells me that ‘dead construction’ is not a grammarian’s term.  They call passive constructions like ‘it is’ and ‘there are’ etc., ‘expletives’.  But Charlie called them dead.  I know this, because when he returned my 40-page graduate Comm Law paper I got a 98.  Not a 100, because somewhere on about page 23 I had used “It is” one time, and there in bright red capital letters, underlined twice, were the words:  AVOID DEAD CONSTRUCTION.

​The analogy merits chasing just a bit.  He called it dead because excellent writing should never have a vague subject and a passive verb.  Excellent writing, and an excellent Christian life should be focused, vibrant and alive. 

​Finally, Charlie wrote to me in that post about being a good mom.  Anyone who was around Charlie for even a little while knew that he adored Peggy, and he loved being a dad, and a grandfather.  He could not talk about family without his trademark twinkle.  Great journalism was important.  Family was more important.

​Lance Fleming, in his tribute last week wrote that when he sought Doc’s advice about a job change, “He agreed that my time on the road was better spent being at home with Jill, Ashley, and Ryan.”

For two years, Doc and Peggy had prayed every day for Rex, Lance and Jill’s oldest son, and for two years Doc ended every email or text to Lance with the words, “God, please kill Rex’s cancer.”

​On the morning after Rex died, Lance had this message from Doc. 

“Wow, God is good.  Rex is healed forever; you guys now have an even more special connection to heaven,” he wrote.  “You know hope is real. You will be finding new ways to touch Rex every day.”

So to Peggy, David, Todd, Scott and all the Marlers – and to all of us, I close with a very careful edit of Charlie’s own words:

​“Wow, God is good.  Charlie is healed forever.  We now have an even more special connection to heaven.   We know hope is real, and we will find new ways to hear Doc’s words in our ears every day.”

Learn More:
Journeying Through Grief: The Death of My Mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler
Mourning the Death of Dr. Charlie Marler, My ACU Professor and Mentor

My journalism professor, mentor, and guiding light, Dr. Charlie Marler, died May 27, 2022, and I plan to write a series of blog posts about the impact he had on my and his other former students’ journalism and media careers. 

Second Post: Searching for Healing, June 4, 2022

Grieving the death of my former Abilene Christian University professor and mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler, June 1, 2022. Photo by Levi Turner, ACU alumni.

I attended the June 1, 2022, Celebration of Life service (download the searchable .PDF). I offered my condolences to Peggy Marler and the rest of Dr. Charlie Marler’s family and colleagues at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. Each speaker trumpeted Marler's commitment to his family, academic scholarship, his faith, and the Abilene community through meaningful anecdotes and his favorite scripture in Philippians. I plan to post the text of some of the speakers' remarks as I receive them.​

Furthermore, this week, I visited ACU’s Journalism and Mass Communication Department to search for healing of my grief  through conversations with members of the JMC community and to celebrate my days as a former KACU announcer/JMC student. Meeting some of the current students and staff, as well as touring classrooms, offices, ACUTV, and the Morris+Mitchell student agency contributed to my healing journey. As the first Black person and the first woman to receive ACU's Gutenberg Award, which Marler created, touching familiar ground was a smart step.

Additionally, I advanced my graduate history studies by meeting with two ACU librarians, Melinda Isbell and Laura Baker. They steered me to a wealth of resources and academic research strategies. Their invaluable guidance advanced my goal to fulfill Marler’s wish that I become a historian, specializing in African American history in Texas.

Moreover, due to a series of unplanned events, I met an ACU staffer, Evan Steele, who went out of his way to support my goals to honor Marler’s legacy, and also, become a Texas historian. Steele offered support and great foreign-language study tips, which will help me prepare for forthcoming Spanish exams for graduate school. 

All in all, I received an ocean of comfort from so many people, including Susan Perry, a long-time Abilene friend who alerted me to Marler's illness, which she found out about in an email from the University Church of Christ. I am so thankful to that church for its quick email blast. Additionally, I appreciate Susan for her fast communication to me, and to her brother, Greg Perry, for his support. If it had not been for them, I would not have known Marler was sick!​

Subsequently, this week was filled with overwhelming grief and loss. Nevertheless, I am navigating through the grief and charting new paths forward. Most of all, I am excited about the new people and resources that came into my life during my time in Abilene. I believe Marler had a hand in it.
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Previous post in the series: Mourning the Death of Dr. Charlie Marler, My ACU Professor and Mentor