TIGER JACK TRAVER

My freshman rhetoric teacher prided himself on being called The Tiger. His classroom : the Tiger's Den, of course. What a great person.

He was frumpy in his appearance, always looked unshaven, but that's because he had such a thick beard. Kinda like an old Kurt Warner who could shave about half a dozen times a day.
He and his wife raised collies and from time to time; ok, daily, you could see evidence on his sportcoat. And collie hairs were not in vogue even in the 60's.

He looked and acted gruff, but he was a total teddy bear. He was good hearted and loved to help out his students. He was such an encourager and an enabler. But it was part of his plan to give self-confidence to his struggling students in rural southern Illinois. And when he complimented you in front of the whole class, it just gave you a feeling of strength. He was going to prepare his students for the next level of education. And if that was it, no more books after his class, then he was going to prepare you for life.

One of his favorite expressions was "x is different than x," that is, "Art is different than art," and when students would express that in their explanations,(i.e.,) the different levels of meaning in a word or expression, he might hop up on his desk and shout, "Eureka!"

He could find something good to say about the weakest of his students, although he was an intellectual whose plain of thought far exceeded ours. And he could relate to Thomas Hardy or the Hardy Boys, though he much preferred the former.

I hope you had a Tiger in your life. Even when I wasn't prepared for his class, I loved going into Tiger Jack's Den.