Ron Hadfield Celebrates 'Mondays with 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 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