​“A good thing about being an award-winning multimedia journalist is that you have reason to be confident.” --With apologies to Walter Mosley’s The Long Fall (Leonid McGill) ​Editorial note: Check  back for updates to this post.

Video courtesy of Michele Thatcher; thank you, Michele!

When I entered the UNT Coliseum on December 15, 2024, with the other graduating master’s and doctoral students, my hands flew up in a wave of victory and praise! My face rearranged into a massive smile, reaching from sea to shining sea under my cap.

Video courtesy of Calvin Wilson; thank you, Calvin!​

​After I heard “Regina Lynn Burns,” my feet flew across the stage.

Video courtesy of Melinda Knott; thank you, Melinda!​

Video courtesy of DeeJay Whiting; thank you, DeeJay!

​By the time I reunited with my friends and family, they showered me with yellow roses, captured precious memories on their cellphones, and drowned me with their love, so much love. I felt overjoyed because I overcame challenges and distractions to accomplish this achievement. Sharing my commencement with my family and friends made it even more important.

​I knew this one thing: I had accomplished something that no one else in my immediate family had done. I had earned two master’s degrees, the first in journalism administration from the University of Memphis under the leadership of professors emeriti Dr. Dan Lattimore and Dr. David Arant, and now this Master of Arts in History from the University of North Texas. Dr. Marler told me "there aren't enough African American historians" and "you can make a difference in your community." These degrees will help me do that.

Paying Tribute to Tyler Barber College Chain Graduates

​Further, this summer, I wrote a master’s thesis, “Texas African American Millionaire Henry Miller Morgan’s Social Justice Crusade: Tyler Barber College Chain, 1933-1974” about the nation’s first African American barber college chain. The UNT Toulouse Graduate School is processing it for publication in 2025.

Next Steps

​Moreover, from the top of my cap to the bottom of my academic regalia, I promised myself another achievement: One day, by the grace of God, I will write a book about Tyler Barber College Chain, whose history and achievement of training 80 percent of the nation's African American barbers during Jim Crow segregation, has been largely ignored.

Moreover​As I left UNT, I felt excited and gave thanks to all of my friends, supporters, academic mentors, professors at both the University of Texas at Arlington and UNT, and family for their support during this life-changing academic experience.
​Honoring Academic Mentors (Added 12.24.24)
I have been thinking about the role and importance of academic mentorship as I  research this topic for future publication. In this space, I will share a few names of some of the academic giants who coached me to the finish line. That finish line includes both completing my master’s thesis in July 2024 and graduating in December 2024. 
The first history professor I spoke with in January 2021 about Dr. Marler’s “order to go back to graduate school” was  Dr. Kimberly Hill, Associate Professor of U.S. and African American History at The University of Texas at Dallas. We had never met before my outreach and she suggested I contact Dr. J. Todd Moye, Fenton W. Robnett Professor of U.S. History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, Director, UNT Oral History Program at UNT. Dr. Moye urged me to contact Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney. Dr. Dulaney offered me scholarships to start my graduate studies at UTA.  UTA Interim Chair and Associate Professor, Dr. Stephanie Cole, was immensely helpful in my onboarding. 
Two University of Memphis Mentors
​I must also reference two previous professors who played significant roles during my master’s in journalism administration at The University of Memphis. Dr. Dan Lattimore was chair of the then-journalism program. With his guidance, I found scholarship funding. After he accepted a new role at the University of Memphis, the new department chair, Dr. David Arant, was a powerful participant in my completion of the Master of Arts in Journalism Administration. Moreover, I stayed connected with Lattimore and Arant over the years. When Lattimore returned to his native Texas after his retirement, he wrote a recommendation for my graduate applications. Subsequently, as I shared my Tyler Barber College Chain research with him, he helped me discover the importance of the 1929 Texas barber license law. Thank you, Dr. Lattimore, for not only reading my prospectus but also for coaching me on my research.
UNT's Three-Minute Thesis Challenge
​Moreover, I am thankful I experienced the UNT Three-Minute Thesis compeition  because it helped me discover new strategies to share my research and to enhance my presentation skills (one slide is a serious challenge but worth it).
Academic Mentors Generate Results
Each academic mentor (and there is an ocean of others too numerous to mention in this post) expanded my ability to cross the finish line. Without these academic mentors, starting at The University of Memphis, I would not have completed this second master’s degree nor the thesis. Again, thank you!
Learn More:
Texas Highways' Profile of Edmund Morrow
​Journeying Through Grief: The Death of My Mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler
EXCLUSIVE: United States’ First African American Barber College Chain's Building Faces Demolition in Tyler, Texas

​I am pleased to announce that I was the guest lecturer Sept. 13-15, 2024, at the Abilene Christian University Department of Journalism and Mass Communication’s 23rd Colloquium in Race & Media. During this 3-day higher education conference, I led 33 students through a fast-paced history of Jim Crow segregation, laws, racial violence, and discrimination, as well as an understanding of the significance of the nation’s first African American barber college chain, Tyler Barber College. The colloquium features academics and media professionals of color as guest lecturers. In order to graduate, all ACU journalism and mass communication majors must take this course two times. 

Invited by Dr. Doug Mendenhall

​​In April 2024, Dr. Doug Mendenhall, ACU Associate Professor and Journalist in Residence, invited me to design the course, which I themed “Tyler Barber College Chain: Texas African American History and Journalism.”

Mendenhall was the faculty liaison and provided the support essential to this successful experience.

​I drew upon my research about Tyler Barber College Chain, founded in Tyler, Texas, during the Great Depression. The late Texas African American millionaire, barber, businessman, and social justice activist, H.M. Morgan, founded Tyler Barber College, which had locations in Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, New York, and Illinois. I used a curated reading list of journalism, scholarly articles, and presented live and recorded interviews of African American subject matter experts from Abilene. They were Floyd Miller, publisher of the West Texas Tribune, his wife, Marilyn, and one of his daughters, Sienna Miller. Two Abilene entrepreneurs appeared via recorded Zoom video: Joyce Ayers, owner of NeeCee's Barber and Cosmetology College, and Gerald Wilkerson, business owner of Wilkerson's Barbershop.

Second Master’s Degree 'in the Can'

​Moreover, I leveraged my historian-journalist training. For example, I recently submitted my history master’s thesis about Morgan and Tyler Barber College Chain to my University of North Texas graduate committee. I used this scholarship to prepare the ACU weekend course content and assignments. UNT's Toulouse Graduate School plans to publish my thesis in its academic databases.

Additionally, I am announcing my forthcoming M.A. in History degree! The Commencement is scheduled in December 2024. In August 2021, I began graduate history studies at the University of Texas at Arlington and transferred to UNT in August 2022. I pursued this new academic path at the behest of the late Dr. Charlie Marler, who was one of my mentors and my former media law professor at ACU, my first alma mater. 

​I previously earned a Master of Arts in Journalism Administration from the University of Memphis under the leadership of Dr. Dan Lattimore and Dr. David Arant, professors emeriti, who chaired the Department of Journalism.

Learn More:
A Newswoman’s Photo/Video Journey
Texas Highways' Profile of Edmund Morrow
​

Rev. Dr. Martin L. King Jr. used by Creative Commons.

As the nation honors birthday and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin L. King Jr., this 2024 holiday is a good time to pay tribute to the lives of the Memphis, Tennessee, sanitation workers who went on strike in 1968. They took a stand against economic, racial, and social injustice after two of their coworkers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death in a Memphis garbage truck. ​The men got in the back of the garbage truck on February 1, 1968, to escape the Memphis rain. Their tragic deaths sparked the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike for economic justice and human dignity, which is why Dr. King went to Memphis. He was assassinated on the balcony of the then-Lorraine Motel, on April 4, 1968.

Courtesy of Creative Commons.

From THE ROOT: Epside 2 WATCH: Video Source: THE ROOT. Jack Walker, Pastor Ruth Walker Dortch, and Shirley Walker, children of the late Robet Walker; Also Hattie Word, Robert’s sister.

​According to a variety of sources, the mostly African American 1968 Memphis sanitation team, received unequal pay compared to their white coworkers. Additionally, the workers experienced substandard and unsafe working conditions, as evidenced by the tragic deaths of Cole and Walker. In 2003, Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, recorded oral history interviews with Memphis sanitation workers and labor and civil rights leaders, who were part of the 1968 strike. The event was called “I AM A MAN" Symposium and featured sanitation worker (watch the video) Taylor Rogers’ who shared memories of the strike:

From Wayne Stte University's website

​Waye State’s symposium also includes a variety of primary sources, such as the pay stub from a striking sanitation worker, photos, newspaper articles, and other resources. The Wayne State University “I AM A MAN" Symposium was curated by, “Dan Golodner, American Federation of Teachers Archivist (AFT), W. P. Reuther Library, Johanna Russ, former American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Archivist (AFSCME), W. P. Reuther Library.” It was designed and developed by, “Meghan Finch, former Metadata Librarian, Wayne State University Libraries Joshua Neds-Fox, Coordinator for Digital Publishing, Wayne State University Libraries.”

MLK50 Team, from https://mlk50.com/about/team/

Learn More:

Meet the MLK50 team.
​The National Civil Rights Museum (formerly the Lorraine Motel), Memphis, TN.
The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change.
The University of Memphis Digital Commons.

2019 MLK Day Prayer by Rev. Dr. Thomas Hudspeth, Associate Pastor of the Deaf Ministry and Congregational Care, Walnut Hill Church, Dallas, TX. (Check out the related links in that post).

Scholarly and Academic Resources:
Estes, Steve. ""I Am a Man!": Race, Masculinity, and the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike." Labor History 41, no. 2 (05, 2000): 153-170.
https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/i-am-man-race-masculinity-1968-memphis-sanitation/docview/221088968/se-2.

Green, Laurie B. “We Were Making History: Students, Sharecroppers, and Sanitation Workers in the Memphis Freedom Movement.” In Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle, 216–50. University of North Carolina Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807888872_green.10.

Hartsell, Cecelia M. “‘I Am a Man’: A Civil Rights-Era Declaration with Roots in the 1700s.” OAH Magazine of History 20, no. 5 (2006): 46–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162086.
 
How the Memphis Sanitation Strike Changed History

(c) HarvestReapers Communications, 2024.
​
​

​​Smith County, Texas Plans New County Courthouse at Site of Historic Tyler Barber College Chain, Now Defunct

The late Henry Miller Morgan, founer of Tyler Barber College

Editorial Note: Regina L. Burns is researching the Tyler Barber College Chain as part of her dissertation at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, where she is a Ph.D. student in the History Department. Tyler Barber College Chain is the nation’s first African American barber school, founded by the late Henry Miller Morgan (also known as H. M. Morgan) during Jim Crow segregation, in 1933 in Tyler, Texas. 
​
Undoubtedly, Morgan’s decision to launch his own school was heavily influenced by Texas’ 1929 barber licensing law, which required barbers to obtain the necessary training to get a license, but segregation blocked African Americans from such training. When Morgan launched Tyler Barber College, not only was it a novel enterprise, but it proved his business and educational acumen and dedication to advancing the uplift of the Black community. 

Burns, an award-winning multimedia journalist who has worked for The Associated Press in Mississippi and Texas, as well as media outlets in Memphis, Tennessee, Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas, first discovered Tyler Barber College during a freelance gig with Texas Highways magazine in the summer of 2020. Burns credits former TH editor, Matt Joyce, with pointing her in Edmund Morrow’s (Jamie Foxx's former barber)  direction. Morrow and his late father, Robert E. Morrow, both graduated from Tyler Barber College’s Dallas location.

At the behest of the late Dr. Charlie Marler, Burns’ former Abilene Christian University media law professor, and longtime mentor, she sought guidance from several historians and professors, and subsequently, enrolled in graduate history courses in fall 2021 at the University of Texxas at Arlington (UTA). Two scholarships from UTA professor emeritus, Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney, made those courses possible. Dulaney, now the national president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), championed her decision to study at the doctoral degree level at the University of North Texas (UNT).

​On behalf of the UNT Oral History Collection, led by Dr. Todd Moye, Burns has conducted several unpublished oral history interviews of graduates/leaders connected to Morgan and the barber college. These interviews will be included in the dissertation.

Due to years of hard work by a group of dedicated volunteers at the Texas Association of Tonsorial Artists, (TAOTA) the professional barbers' organization Morgan founded in the 1950s,  and the Smith County Historical Society, the Texas Historical Commission honored Morgan’s legacy with a state historical marker in 2004. The TAOTA held a jubilant marker dedication ceremony in 2005 (document provided by James Smith, former TAOTA executive president) in Tyler in front of the building that formerly housed the school, which closed in the 1970s.

Also in 2005, the 79th Texas Legislature honored Morgan’s historical marker in both the Senate and the House. These rare and hard-won public accolades, together with the pioneering work of the school's administrators, instructors, and graduates, are undeniable evidence of Morgan’s power and brilliance, and the college’s educational, economic, and cultural impacts to Texas and the nation.​
​
The news article is below.

The historic building that formerlty housed Tyler Barber College, 212 E. Erwin St. in Tyler, Texas, will be demollished to make way for construction of a new Smith County Courthouse. Photo taken on July 24, 2023. Copyright Emily Buziewicz.

Via Boston Public Library's Flickr page; photo found by UNT History Department Chair Dr. Jennifer Jensen Wallach

Learn more:
Texas Highways' Profile of Edmund Morrow, Jamie's Foxx's Former Barber
EXCLUSIVE: 53 years after attending Dr. King's funeral at the behest of Ann Arbor, Michigan officials, meet the Black man who was president ... (Online Audio Documentary)
Reporter's Notebook: Covering the Alamo’s Historic Reveal for Texas Highways Magazine
Copyright (2023) Regina L. Burns
​

​

​I wanted to eat the whole 890-calorie butter cake slice from the Athens, Texas, Cotton Patch Cafe, but I didn't. My hard-won weight loss during the lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic and the weekly maintenance goal (and strength training challenges) to keep off those 40 pounds stopped me. Thank you, Weight Watchers!

Screengrab of Cotton Patch Cafe's Butter Cake ​I enjoyed the divinely delicious part I ate, tracked it in the WW app, and boxed up the rest to go in the freezer in Dallas, Texas.

It was January 2023 and I was on assignment for Texas Highways magazine in Athens, an East Texas town well-known for its food and exciting aquatic experiences. Just like its namesake, Athens, Greece, people flock here to have new adventures. I sensed my profile on the town, through Athens City Councilmember SyTanna Freeman’s eyes, would be memorable. For example, when we went to the $18 million Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, I was thrilled to include this treasure in my story. We made other stops as Freeman narrated insights about her childhood and early life.  

​Read my ​Texas Highways' Athens profile here
Story photo by Tiffany Hofeldt
Slideshow photos of me by Emily Buziewicz

 Since 1998, the town has elected three African Americans, Carl Westbrook, Elaine Jenkins, and Freeman, to the Athens City Council, according to city spokesman Michael Hannigan. Freeman is the only African American city councilmember among five currently serving Athens.  She cherishes that role and recently celebrated 20 years with the Athens Independent School District. Furthermore, she works part-time after school taking the tickets at the Hornets’ games. 

Later that crisp Friday evening at Athens High School, I witnessed the charm Freeman brings to ticket taking as she doled out change and chatted with students, parents, and other basketball fans. The magic of community connections revealed itself in smiles, “Good evenings,” and several versions of “Sorry, you can’t bring that bag in here.” The people who received those last comments generally responded with “Sorry, I didn’t see the sign. I’ll take it back to the car.” Freeman’s daughter, Tabitha Page, and her young children, stopped by and another part of the Athens story fell into place.
​
The next day, I met Rev. Earnest Freeman,  SyTanna's husband. He is a manager in retail and also the pastor at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. The church, which was founded in 1896, is located 10 miles west of Athens in the Sand Flat community. SyTanna Freeman said some descendants of the original founders are among the church's membership. In March 2023, the Freemans celebrated “11 years of faithful service” at the church.

SyTanna Freeman is also the First Lady at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, where her husband, Rev. Earnest Freeman, is the pastor. The couple has served the church 11 years as of March 2023.

Heading back to Dallas, I realized Athens has a powerful connection to its namesake. Fishing enthusiasts support its remarkable Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center as well as Lake Athens. The high school’s Hornets’ athletic events are popular with the hometown crowd, and SyTanna Freeman and her family are leaders contributing to Athens’ success. I  witnessed the  distinctive bonds and special moments of small-town life. My own enjoyment of an unbelievable culinary treat topped off the assignment. My trip to Athens  was a memorable adventure.

Celebrating my four "My Hometown" profiles in Texas Highways magazine, February 2023, at Barnes & Noble, Plano, TX.

This Women’s History Month 2023, I am saluting Texas Highways magazine for its ongoing commitment to creating editorial opportunities for Black women journalists, such as me. Thank you, Matt Joyce, my former editor, for opening this wonderful opportunity to me! Joyce was a patient editor and he helped me learn the nuances of reporting in the “as-told-to” format. When I needed journalism work, Texas Highways contracted me to report substantial assignments, including fact-checking gigs and web stories.  Moreover, I landed and  contributed to a range of projects, including traveling to Terrell, Palestine, Abilene, and Kaufman for “My Hometown” profiles. 

Last fall, I trekked to Kaufman to interview Hector Torres for Texas Highways' February 2023 issue. I discovered that Kaufman was a friendly place, and Torres’ rich life story was bonded with loving-familial connections, self-empowerment, business leadership, and civic power. 

 I am using my journalism experience to build a new foundation and to earn a doctoral degree in history at the University of North Texas. My goal is to become a professor in African American history in Texas. Furthermore, Joyce championed my graduate history studies by writing recommendation letters. I started my graduate studies in 2021 at UT Arlington thanks to scholarships from Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney. I am pursuing this degree because of the encouragement from my late mentor and former Abilene Christian University media law professor, Dr. Charlie Marler.

​All of my Texas Highways journalism gigs enabled me to expand my storytelling skills in the Texas travel and magazine markets. Each of these "My Hometown" profiles also taught me new ways to do research. Subsequently, I have contributed to the magazine’s diversity of subjects, towns, and content. Stay tuned for more of my Texas Highways' gigs!

View my other Texas Highways' work here

Quick Facts
Name: New Mount Zion Baptist Church
Address: 9550 Shepherd Road, Dallas, Texas 75243
Phone number: 214.341.6459
Website: www.nmzb.org/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nmzbc1598/streams
Pastor: Dr. Tommy L. Brown, installed on Nov. 9, 2014; President of the Baptist Ministers Union of Dallas and Vicinity 
First Lady: Ruth "Nell" Brown; 2nd Vice President of the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Minister Wives and Widows Auxiliary  
Year Founded: January 1946
Unique Service: GriefShare Affiliate

View Regina's Selected Black History Posts:
Reporter's Notebook: Covering the Alamo’s Historic Reveal for Texas Highways Magazine

​'Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr' Author Dr. Michael Williams Commemorates the 50th Anniversary

EXCLUSIVE: 53 years after attending Dr. King's funeral at the behest of Ann Arbor, Michigan officials, meet the Black man who was president of the NAACP Youth Council and whose name never made the newspapers in 1968 (Online Audio Documentary)

8 Women Historymakers

Veteran Dallas Morning News Columnist Norma Adams-Wade Still Making History

Saluting Kenny Ray DeWalt: Memphis Trombone Player for Rev. Al Green, The Bar-Kays

Updated: Do you know why Dr. King went to Memphis?

Read my other Texas Highways work here.

This Texas Highways’ web story is one of the most important news stories I have ever reported. It bolsters my award-winning journalism experience and current pursuit of the Ph.D. in history at the University of North Texas. Further, it contributes to research about Emily West and Hendrick Arnold, the two mixed-race African American historic figures who will forever be celebrated for their contributions to the Texas Revolution.

​Read about my journey to graduate school

​When I received an email from Texas Highways magazine asking if I would be interested in reporting about the Alamo’s first statues honoring African Americans who were part of the Texas Revolution, I squeezed it into my overcrowded schedule. What I discovered about them confirmed the wisdom of my late former Abilene Christian University mentor, Dr. Charlie Marler. During a phone call in December 2020, he said,“There aren’t enough African American historians. I want you to go back to school to become a historian!” ​

That was an order, not a request.

Read my memorial blog series about Dr. Marler

​I am so glad I listened and followed Dr. Marler’s order to go back to school and that he witnessed my graduate studies in the history program at the University of Texas at Arlington. That achievement was possible thanks to scholarships from Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney, the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and he is also UTA professor emeritus. I look forward to researching, reporting, writing, and publishing many more neglected Black history stories for  multimedia platforms, magazines, newspapers, academic journals, books, and yes, my future dissertation!

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