(to hear music while reading, click on video link)

Kerry Byrnes OHS '63

“WHY I WRITE” - Emails from Dale Brubaker

by Kerry J. Byrnes

In June 2011, I located Dale Brubaker - my OHS American Government teacher in 1962. On the Internet I found an email address for a “Dr. Dale Brubaker.” On emailing to this Dale Brubaker, the reply came back that he was the Dale Brubaker who taught at OHS.

Unlike Robert Redford's role in Brubaker (1980), when I finally tracked down Dale, he was not serving time in jail but rather serving students as Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Over the next two years Dale and I had a robust exchange of emails. I sent to him draft vignettes for my writing project. Each time Dale answered with suggestions to improve my writing. Dale also shared his autobiography and encouraged me to write an autobiography.

On Christmas Day of 2012, Dale emailed to me this feedback: “Kerry, this is precisely the kind of writing that moves me. It has the words and the music. Stay with it.”

Dale also attached a one-page gem titled “WHY I WRITE.” Reading it inspired me to “Stay with it.” to complete my writing project – a memoir (or autobiography) that is now near completion!

Were Dale yet alive, I’m sure he would post his WHY I WRITE on OkemosAlumni.org to inspire OHS alumni, as he did me, to write up and share their experiences. With Dale’s OK, I post below Dale’s “message from beyond.”

WHY I WRITE

By Dale L. Brubaker

Driven by curiosity, one of the most important human traits and the engine for learning, I can share with others what I discover in searching for meaning.

Rebirthing, a fresh start, is the promise for each new subject explored through writing, thus giving me a sense of awe, wonder and amazement, a child-like feeling I always want to keep, oxygen for the writer.

Writing is a vivid way to tell a story.

Writing is a dramatic way to record my thoughts and feelings so that I can look back and see where I was at a particular time in a particular place.

Rewriting provides opportunities to sharpen thoughts and feelings and a chance to release my perfectionist tendencies and be more discerning and precise.

It is immensely satisfying when someone reads my writing, appreciates my efforts and shares this with me and perhaps others, thus giving me hope that they have taken my writing seriously--the power of empathy.

Writing is a strong antidote for counteracting boredom and depression.

Writing affords me opportunity to experience love and work, passion and productivity.

Writing invites me to create new frameworks for making sense of the subject I am writing about.

Dale L. Brubaker

7/26/12

For more about Dale, please see the Memories of Dale Brubaker vignette in the Memoirs/Index page of this website.

Stay tuned as I will be posting more remembrances of my OHS teachers - and look forward to reading your memories of these teachers.