Category Archives: Bob Reid

On Being Bob Reid …

The recent passing of legendary professor Bob Reid sent a chill through those of us who love Baylor. It was a reminder, once again, of a day when great teachers ruled. Not researchers or writers or administrators. Teachers. Inspiring men and women who knew how to move mountains with their words and — what is much more difficult — knew how to move the hearts and minds of hormone-ridden 18-year-old boys.

I wrote a feature on Bob Reid for The Baylor Line a few years ago. Perhaps it will be of interest to you. It was a bittersweet journey for me to read it again when The Line posted it on their website this week: http://www.bayloralumniassociation.com/content/baylor_line__online_publications/prof_robert_rei.asp

Re-reading it, I wondered if we’d ever see his like again.

Bob Reid did not have a Ph.D. He didn’t write scholarly, academic tomes. He loved teaching. He loved his students. And they loved — and still love — him.

He made Greek and Roman history come alive. He was passionate about it. He was a story-teller. Yes, there were dates and facts and figures mixed in from time to time, but you wanted to learn them because they were markers along the way that helped you remember the stories. He was a magician with words. The old Roman emperors and Greek philosophers lived in his classrooms as surely as they once lived in the ancient Mediterranean. He often spoke of past events in the present tense. Sometimes he spoke of them in the first person — then he would catch himself and laugh.

Oh, how we loved to hear him laugh!

Bob Reid believed that Baylor could best be served by inspiring young people, by filling them with a passion for learning and life. We talked about this a few times. The idea that a professor could be so caught up in his research that a student could be just an annoyance baffled him. The idea that research was its own reward and that teaching was something you did as little as possible of as you worked for your own greater academic glory through publishing frankly appalled him.

Bob Reid was a teacher.

Got a problem with that?

And, oh! How I’d love to hear him laugh again …