{"id":4780,"date":"2013-01-06T19:07:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T00:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/clemsonworld\/?p=4780"},"modified":"2013-01-06T19:07:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T00:07:21","slug":"always-in-the-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/always-in-the-details\/","title":{"rendered":"Always in the details"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Louis
\nI have always felt blessed and unabashedly proud that my academic career brought me to Clemson University \u2014 and doubly so that my greatest influence there was Louis Henry. He was, after all, a native son: Born in 1931 to parents who were employed by the University, he would graduate from Clemson in 1953 and some two decades later be named the first Alumni Master Teacher. I\u2019d known nothing of the award until I picked up a 1974 Homecoming program a few years ago on eBay and started thumbing through in a fit of nostalgia. There he was, featured in a two-page article, younger than I\u2019d ever seen him, but much the same man I\u2019d come to know during my college years in the 1980s.
\n\u201cYes, that was quite an honor,\u201d he chuckled when I called down a few days later, then promptly shifted conversation in another direction, a classic Henry maneuver. Of all the subjects on which he\u2019d freely converse \u2014 and there were many \u2014 he was least inclined to discuss himself, always more interested in the person who\u2019d taken up a seat in his office, living room, wherever.
\n[pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]Louis Henry was a gifted educator, and a good deal more, in part due to his belief that teachers did their greatest work outside of the classroom.[\/pullquote] It was a mantra he\u2019d adopted early on in his career and practiced daily in his first-floor Strode Tower office. Like so many other Clemson students, I spent my share of time there. First as an undergraduate, then a graduate student and finally, for two years, as an instructor, I took any and all questions \u2014 many of them grammar related \u2014 and mooched coffee that might have been poured from a crank case. I always felt welcome there, its book-lined shelves punctuated with photographs, the manual typewriter and potted plants. It was a comfortable, easy-going space that seemed in those days Louis Henry\u2019s natural domain.
\nEqual parts inspiration and common sense, that\u2019s how I remember him and that\u2019s what I took from two of the most valuable lessons I ever received. The first he seemed to embody: Find your passion and pursue it. His work with students over the years spoke to the depth of his commitment. The same might be said of his friendships, now that I think about it, since there was scarcely ever a conversation that didn\u2019t involve the latest on half a dozen other folks of our shared acquaintance. A lot of those lives crossed paths through Louis Henry. Then there was lesson number two, a tough one in this high-tech, fast-paced age that holds everything at the fingertips except time. \u201cLife is in the details,\u201d he said, and said it over and over in the way he lived.
\nFor the past 22 years, our conversations were split between the telephone and the occasional visit in his living room out in Central. The last decade or so saw his health compromised and his activities pared down so that eventually he had to give up his Clemson baseball tickets. Years ago we\u2019d discovered a mutual passion for baseball in general, Clemson baseball in particular, and this near obsession became a recurring theme.
\nDr. Henry\u2019s birthday was in February, the same month the Tigers fire off the first pitch, appropriately enough. He knew all the players by name and position, could detail their respective strengths, and preferred \u201cwatching games on the radio.\u201d And his trip out to the College World Series in 1996 stayed always fresh in his mind. Indelible, really.
\n\u201cYou have to go. That\u2019s a trip you just have to make,\u201d he kept saying until there was no missing the opportunity and I found myself on a plane out to Omaha with my 9-year-old son in 2010. Life in the details, I remember thinking then, as my traveling companion, who carries the Henry middle name, settled back and tried to rein in his excitement. Always in the details \u2026 though it may be years before we fully grasp their meaning.
\nThere are two memorial funds for Dr. Henry set up with the Clemson Foundation: the Dr. Louis Henry \u201953 Endowment, supporting The Tiger newspaper, and the Clemson Baseball\/Louis Henry Memorial supporting the baseball team.
\nClif Collins \u201984, M \u201988, largely due to the influence of Dr. Henry, is now teaching college English in Laurel, Md.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always felt blessed and unabashedly proud that my academic career brought me to Clemson University \u2014 and doubly so that my greatest influence there was Louis Henry. He was, after all, a native son: Born in 1931 to parents who were employed by the University, he would graduate from Clemson in 1953 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":6125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[168,739,1103,1827,2999,3296],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landmarks-legends","tag-alumni-master-teacher","tag-clif-collins","tag-english","tag-louis-henry","tag-tiger","tag-winter-2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/01\/Henry_-Louis.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4780"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}