Teacher, Mentor and Friend

Author and journalist John W. Fountain looks through the U of I library archive files collection of his former journalism professor Robert Reid, who died in 2004. Fountain said Prof. Reid had a major impact on his own career as a journalist, serving as a mentor expecting the best of his students. (Image by Fred Zwicky)

Inside the hushed archives of the University of Illinois on a sleepy end-of-fall-semester Friday afternoon, a librarian escorts me to a black cart topped with seven boxes that contain the papers of my professor and mentor.

The contents are an assortment of scentless inanimate letters, yellowing and faded newspaper clippings, hand-written notes…. I search for something among them. Exactly what, I do not know for certain. But I am drawn by forces I cannot fully comprehend or articulate.

They have pulled me like gravity to 408 W. Gregory Dr., to a fluorescent-lit room that houses the University Archives.

Some years ago, I remember stumbling upon the existence of this collection while doing a Google search on Professor Robert D. “Bob” Reid—and the University of Illinois. To my surprise, a record of his “papers” turned up. I decided that someday I needed to visit the University’s Main Library to review them. Someday….

Except reviewing the notes, former possessions and words of departed loved ones, even of a beloved professor, is not an unemotional or a painless proposition. It requires of me a certain willingness to accept the joy, and also the salted tears that may come along with unearthing sweet memories and the stinging reality that they are forever gone. Even if some archived remnants of days and times past might temporarily be held between my fingers.

Perhaps such a search can lead to the discovery of more answers than questions. Perhaps to more purpose than pain. Or maybe the find is less lofty, though no less meaningful, and the journey essential to the soul.

“You can’t teach fire in the belly,” John W. Fountain recalls his former journalism professor Robert D. “Bob” Reid telling him. “You’ve got to have your own.” (Image courtesy of U of I StratCom)

A student’s recent note at the end of the Fall 2023 semester at Roosevelt University, where I am a journalism professor, kindled memories of my struggles as an undergrad. Back then, I was married with children, having been born and bred in poverty on Chicago’s West Side into the nation’s “permanent underclass.” Or as Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson described us: “The Truly Disadvantaged.”

“I wouldn’t be here without you. Did you know that?” my student, Kay, wrote in part on a Christmas card she handed to me on the last day of class, and which I promptly tucked inside my suit jacket pocket to read alone later.

Truth is, I wouldn’t be here without Professor Reid. Not in journalism. Not teaching in a university classroom.

I’ve long admitted that. Professor Reid always saw me beyond my poverty, beyond my socioeconomic DNA, beyond my race—even when I could not.

After reading Kay’s note that evening, I contacted the Graduate Library at Illinois:

“To Whom It May Concern, My name is John Fountain. I am a graduate of the University of Illinois and a former student of Professor Reid. In fact, he was my mentor. I would like to review his papers…. Please advise.”

A few days later, a message popped into my inbox. Reid’s papers were ready for my perusal. I gas up my car and head to Champaign, my heart and wheels racing.

Inside Room 146, I place my cell phone and MacBook on a varnished wooden table and pull from the adjacent cart the top box, marked “Box 7.” It is rectangular and gray and inscribed: “University Archives, Communications, Journalism, Robert D. Reid Papers, 1978–2003, Articles Authored By Former Students.”

In as much as I feel led here, I stand before these boxes of time and memories, myself strangely a box of nerves.

“I often think back to our discussions at Greg Hall…. School was very difficult for me at that time, particularly with the pressures of taking care of a family. …In those times when I needed encouragement, I found it in your reassurances and in your care for me as a human being. I felt like you cared and that you believed in me.” —Letter from Reid’s papers, dated Thursday, May 6, 1999, sent from fountainj@washpost.com

John W. Fountain visits his and Reid’s former office, located in the lower of level of Gregory Hall. (Image by Fred Zwicky)

I arrive back at Illinois exactly 19 years since Professor Reid retired. About four months after I assumed my post at Illinois as a new professor, Reid died at his home in Champaign of a heart attack.

At my return to campus on a sunny afternoon, it had been 19 years since that fall of 2004, when I became a tenured full professor of journalism at Illinois with Professor Reid’s blessing and recommendation after a career as a newspaper journalist. Nineteen years since I received news—after I had arrived home in Chicago’s south suburbs from teaching in Champaign that week—that 10 days before Christmas he was gone.

Four months earlier, I had moved into his old garden-level office at 23 Gregory Hall—freshly painted white cinderblock walls. It was a full-circle moment: mentee following in the steps of his mentor, returning to occupy the same office where I had spent countless hours absorbing the counsel of a professor whom I call my journalism father.

We were perhaps an unlikely pair. He was white. I am Black. He was bold. I was shy. He earned degrees from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Here I was at Illinois on a second chance and barely. I had dropped out of college a few years earlier and was, by age 22, married with three children and on welfare.

Reid was a tall and bespectacled man with a schoolboy smile and the demeanor of a drill sergeant. He had reddish brown hair that even in his 60s seemed as thick as Clark Kent’s. His husky baritone voice and guttural laugh flooded a room, spilling into the halls. He was tough, but fair in his courses. None of them was more feared than Journalism 380, the capstone undergraduate reporting class.

Work turned in even a minute late was not accepted. Reid’s rule was simple: Once he closed his door at the start of class, anyone outside was late. I have seen grown men cry.

Reid was a stickler for Associated Press Style and grammar. Keen on detail. But mostly, he was a torchbearer for journalism and its foundational principles, an advocate for humanity and public affairs journalism, and a true believer in the ability of journalists with passion and purpose to make a difference. Most importantly, he believed in students and in taking time beyond the classroom to stoke our flames and dreams.

“I trusted Reid. My trust and respect were earned by the way he always spoke to me: respectfully, eye to eye, without animus, gruffness or rudeness, or as if I was the ‘Black student’ in class who didn’t deserve to be at the university in the first place. Reid had a way of making unfavored sons feel at home.” —JOHN W. FOUNTAIN

“You can’t teach fire in the belly,” he used to say with the glint of a preacher in his eyes, his voice unwavering. “You’ve got to have your own.”

Reid was like fire—hot, irrepressible, contagious. Like many other students who sought his wisdom and advice, I spent countless hours collectively in his office in what I later called our “fireside chats.” The sun had sometimes set by the time we ended.

Or sometimes Reid would stroll outside to smoke a cigarette. He puffed and exhaled with the same relaxing and deeply satisfying pleasure I had witnessed of my mother. Reid seemed to smoke with almost the same passion with which he taught, at least with the same commitment. No judgment. Just the facts.

I trusted Reid. My trust and respect were earned by the way he always spoke to me: respectfully, eye to eye, without animus, gruffness or rudeness, or as if I was the “Black student” in class who didn’t deserve to be at the University in the first place. Reid had a way of making unfavored sons feel at home.

He often spoke about the state of diversity in American newsrooms, or lack thereof. About the dire need for reporters at daily newspapers who were Black like me, having matriculated from the school of poverty and hard knocks—and who would not leave their experience and perspectives on the curbside of American journalism.

Mostly, I did more listening than talking. And mostly, Reid talked about journalism and life.

Reid collected clippings of articles authored by his former journalism students, which he hung on bulletin boards outside of his office to inspire current students. (Image courtesy of John W. Fountain)

Inside Reid’s boxes, I find a treasure trove of published stories by former Illinois journalism students whose work he used to cut out of newspapers or print to hang like precious jewels on the bulletin boards outside his office as inspiration to current students. I recognize some of the names.

One by one, I open folders and turn the pages with care, eavesdropping on conversations and searching in earnest for something that will, in particular, speak to me, though I do not know what I need to hear. I search on, flipping through more file folders, in a box marked, “…Letters From Former Students.” My eyes settle upon letters from alumni writing to update Reid on their careers, some seeking advice, and many expressing gratitude for his (TLC) teaching, love and care. I find one, written by a former student, then a reporter at The Washington Post.

“One of the most vivid conversations I remember is that you said to me, ‘John, someday you’ll be this successful journalist and you’ll come back here to speak. I won’t care about what kind of car you’re driving….

“What I’ll care about is what kind of person you are. And when you pick up the telephone at work one day and there’s some kid on the other end saying, ‘Bob Reid at the University of Illinois told me to give you a call,’ that you take the time to talk to them. My answer is still ‘anytime.’ Anytime.”
–Letter to Reid, May 6, 1999, from John Fountain.

I had forgotten I wrote that letter in between the now fuzzy phone conversations and other messages exchanged between professor and former student over a decade since I had left Illinois. But I had not forgotten over the years, nor failed to keep that promise.

As I continue to read, my brown eyes swell with tears that I fight hard to keep from rolling down my face. Not for pain. But for the joy of a professor who could always see me, even when I could not see myself.

After graduating from Illinois, John W. Fountain went on to become a national correspondent for The New York Times. (Image by Fred Zwicky)

I walk out of the Graduate Library. I stand on its steps, a mix of emotions. I am also pensive. I decide to visit our old haunt, Gregory Hall, just a stone’s throw away.

I enter the doors. …To my left is a wing leading to the College of Communications library. Even here are memories of Reid and of a past letter that I would not find in his papers. One day as a graduate student, I was walking through that hall when he asked me if I had a moment. I said, “Yes, of course.”

“What I’m about to show you I could probably lose my job over,” Reid said before handing me a typewritten letter. “But I think you need to see this.”

My eyes fell upon the paper. It was a letter I had asked my former supervisor at the Champaign News-Gazette newspaper to write on my behalf for admission to graduate school. My heart dropped as I read the words, most of which I cannot recall with specificity, although its spirit and intent are forever ingrained. I had asked him for a “letter of recommendation.” He wrote a letter of degradation. “Not everyone means you well, not everyone can be trusted,” Reid consoled me that day, as I handed the letter back to him. “If [he] could not in good conscience write a letter of recommendation as you had asked, he should have declined or at least have been honest with you about his thoughts.”

That newspaper editor’s betrayal stung. I always suspected the underlying issue was racism. That it had more to do with the fact that I am Black and that the editor, who was white, meant me no good.

Reid’s revelation would many years later dictate my policy on writing letters of recommendation for students and others: to choose honesty and openness over dishonesty and cowardice; to always provide them with a copy of the letter I wrote; and to decline if I am unable to offer a recommendation.

I descend the stairs to the basement. It is the end of the semester, the building quiet and nearly empty. My name—and Reid’s—are long gone from Room 23, and replaced by someone’s who I do not recognize. I left Illinois in 2007, three years after Reid’s death, to teach at Roosevelt.

I linger a short while inside Greg Hall for old time’s sake, then inhale deeply, as if ingesting for one last time a season and place that have become distant memories. Before making this trip, I had inquired of others close to me whether my desire to review Reid’s papers sounded wacky or morbid. They said, “No,” but had no answers.

And there are none as I drive north on Interstate 57 toward home, my mind swirling with more questions than answers.

“He often spoke about the state of diversity in American newsrooms, or lack thereof. About the dire need for reporters at daily newspapers who were Black like me, having matriculated from the school of poverty and hard knocks—and who would not leave their experience and perspectives on the curbside of American journalism.” —JOHN W. FOUNTAIN

I never got closure.

This much I unearthed after much soul searching. I had received the sudden news of Reid’s death. Then days later, a Christmas card he had sent before he died arrived in the mail. That always felt weird, unsettling in a way—to read his words written to me on the card and having to reconcile that he was now gone, dead.

I attended Prof. Reid’s memorial in February 2004, where I spoke as one of his former students. But I never had the chance really to say, “goodbye.” I knew he was sick, but I thought, perhaps fool-heartedly, that there was more time.

I have come to see this oversight about time as a human failing. And I now know that time and life are as fleeting as a summer’s breeze. That seasons can slip through our fingers.

Time. It is not on our side. Every day I am reminded that it passes without apology, sifting memories and melodies of the past, whispering upon the winds to those who will hear her that your time too will soon have come and gone. The time for being a journalist. The time for being a professor.

Since my mother’s death 10 years ago, I have returned to her gravesite whenever my spirit is compelled. To pay respects and to be as near to her as I possibly can: in mind, body and spirit. Sometimes I need to hear her. To bathe in sweet recollections of someone who, even when the world said I was nothing, said that I was something. Someone who, despite circumstances and odds that can sometimes cloud one’s vision, could always see me. Someone who believed in me.

Sometimes I need to go see my mother.

Standing or kneeling near her headstone, I speak to her and allow memories of her loving, uplifting and restorative words to fill me. Like the words of my beloved mentor and professor. They rose, like the fragrance of fresh lilacs, from papers and letters inside the hushed archives of the University’s library, flooding my heart and soul.