Baylor School – Math Teacher; Football, Basketball, and Track Coach BS, Murray State University, 1966

John grew up in Tennessee and Alabama, played basketball at Scottsboro High School. He then joined the Navy and for the next ten years served as an F-4 flight officer, spending seventeen months in Vietnam. His life during that time was straight out of Top Gun: he was injured and his pilot buddy killed in a freak ejection. He met his wife, Cathy , also a Baylor teacher, at the Officers’ Club in San Diego. There followed a two-year tour of duty in Turkey, which, John says, forced him to become a patient person. During this time he became fascinated by the idea of teaching. He and Cathy moved to Chattanooga; John earned a teaching credential at UTC and then joined the Baylor faculty.

A teacher of Math 8 and of eighth grade Algebra I for more than eighteen years, John says that teaching math is “more interesting every day.” Instead of showing students exactly how to determine the volume of a table (what he calls “monkey see–monkey do”), he gives them the formula for the volume of a box and turns them loose. Instead of giving them a geometrically neat area to calculate, he draws an irregular one.

John’s teaching is based on a remarkable questioning technique. If a student has trouble answering a question, John asks a more basic question. “What’s one-half percent of 200?” becomes “What’s one percent of 200?” or “What does percent mean?” Even if one student answers a question correctly, John asks for second and third answers. He never uses the words wrong or no, and he never tells his students the answer to a question. Instead, they must think logically to be sure that they have arrived at the answer. A sign posted in John’s class room declares, “Logic Will Prevail!”

John played and coached basketball in the service, and he has coached the eighth grade football and basketball teams since coming to Baylor. In the spring he works with the high jumpers and pole vaulters.

Among John’s pastimes are water skiing, tennis, golf, hiking, camping, and reading. He and Cathy have a daughter, Whitney, who is a student at Baylor. The Class of ‘62 regrets to learn of the passing of John’s wife Cathy in the spring of 2005. John, you have our prayers and best wishes.