Dr. Becker

During my time in higher education, I earned a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University, a master’s degree from Eastern Michigan and a specialist degree from Michigan State.  I took a lot of classes.  I remember two instructors from all that time. Dr. Alan was my advisor for my specialist degree, and Dr. Becker taught a speech class that I took during my junior year at Western.  I remember Dr. Alan because she let me use all my notes during my final exam, and Dr. Becker because he was a good teacher.  The best I had.

I’ve never been a great student.  I never studied hard.  I did everything that was required, but not much more.  I worked hardest for those who grabbed my interest.  Dr. Becker was a short man, but he stands tall in my mind.

One of our first speech class assignments was to read aloud for ten minutes from a magazine article of our choosing.  The only magazines we had in our apartment were Playboys, so that’s what I took to class.  I chose an article while I was waiting for my turn to read.  I don’t recall anything about it, but it was one with a lot of words and no pictures.

I wasn’t more than two or three sentences into my reading when he stopped me.  It was a class of about twenty students, and I was the third or fourth to read.  He didn’t stop the students before me, so I was surprised when he told me to stop.  He wasn’t concerned with the subject matter, but rather, my lack of expression.

He said something like, “If you’re doing a good job, people should be able to see what you’re reading.  Let’s try it again.”  So, I did.

I didn’t get much farther during my second attempt, when he stopped me again.  He offered some additional guidance and had me try another time.  He stopped me four or five times before he recognized my growing frustration and asked if I wanted to take a break and try again during our next class.  I accepted his offer.  We met every Tuesday and Thursday, so I only had to wait two days.  I practiced reading my story aloud, so Thursday went much better.

Another assignment required us to gather multiple readings on the same topic.  I chose to read passages from Mark Twain’s diaries of Adam and Eve and the book of Genesis from the Bible.  Twain’s words were satirical, and the Bible was straight forward. I thought the students might find the contrast to be entertaining.  I don’t know if they did, but Dr. Becker noted that my reading was a minute short of the requirement.

Near the end of that semester Dr. Becker told us that he had a foreign exchange student coming to stay with him.  He wanted one of us to record a reading for the student.  Dr. Becker made a literary selection he believed included all the enunciation idiosyncrasies of the English language and he wanted one of us to make the recording.

He asked the class to make the selection.  He wanted a voice that we thought would to a good job enunciating the reading with a Midwest accent.  They chose me.  I never looked at myself that way.  I still don’t.  In any case, I made the recording.  Back then you spoke into a microphone and cut a record. I reported to a studio to complete my task. It was a fifteen-minute read, with no do-overs, cut into a 33 RPM record.

I’ve been working on my audio book for the past several weeks, so I think that’s why this memory popped up.  The second part that popped was, while I couldn’t know it at the time, even though she was a student at Michigan State, Ruth knew Dr. Becker.

TBC