By Meryl Herr
I can still remember the click-clack of her heels down the tiled hall connecting the front office and her classroom at Vestavia Hills High School. As her footsteps drew closer, I think everyone held their breath, not knowing what our fiery red-headed teacher had in store for us that day.
By the time I got to 10th grade, I hated English (or what my kids know as English Language Arts). It didn’t help that my academic outlook had me in Miss Dale Quin’s classes for the next three years. Her reputation for being strict and demanding scared me. I completed 9th grade with little to no confidence in my ability to interpret literature and memorize tough vocabulary words. How would I survive one advanced and two AP classes taught by Miss Quin?
Little did I know then that I wouldn’t merely survive in her classes, but I would begin to thrive under her care. In fact, twenty-five years later, I would dedicate my first book to her: “In loving memory of Miss Dale Quin, who taught me to love words.”
Somewhere between 10th and 12th grades, I began to enjoy reading again. I discovered a love for grammar that would continue as I studied French, Spanish, Biblical Greek, and Ancient Hebrew. And Miss Quin showed me how to leverage grammar and syntax to make my writing clear and organized. The lessons were painful, often coming through watching her red pen strike through words and phrases on my essay outlines that had to have a strong thesis and grammatically parallel main points.
Miss Quin’s instruction paid off, though. When I went to Vanderbilt, I had a professor tell me that he had never met a math major who could write so well. That was because of Miss Quin.
As my book hit shelves this past March, I realized that I could have said more about Miss Quin in my dedication. Yes, she taught me to love words. But she was also by my side when I experienced some profound disappointments in high school, precursors of the disappointments I would later face in my professional life.
When I unexpectedly lost the election for Hope Club president, she immediately stepped in to encourage me. And when I was nominated for and lost every National Honor Society leadership election, except for whatever role put me in charge of overseeing the banquet, she was there, finding additional opportunities for me to lead.
So here’s to Miss Quin, a petite woman with a huge heart who made an outsized impact on my writing and leadership. May her memory be a blessing, and may her kind multiply.
