What is a hero if not an ordinary person called to extraordinary action?
When it comes to choosing content for this magazine, the editorial staff is blessed with an embarrassment of riches. Middlebury folks live fascinating lives—be it a young Afghan woman who survived the reign of the Taliban and found her way to Middlebury, the psychology professor who teamed with students to publish groundbreaking work on parent-child relationships, or the novelist who delved deep into her family history to craft a gripping tale about an infamous killing spree. The stories that are printed on these pages can be so intriguing, in fact, that if there’s a common complaint about our story selection it’s that our subjects are, well, too extraordinary.
People will often tell me that they love the magazine, but, they add, “I feel like there isn’t enough coverage of regular people like me.” So I’m left wondering: do we allow room for the student or alum who didn’t move hell and high water to attend college; who didn’t receive an Emmy for his hit TV show; who didn’t issue earth-shifting judicial rulings from a federal bench? (All of these examples, by the way, were recent Middlebury Magazine stories, stories that I am immensely proud of publishing.)
Flipping through past issues, I discover that there is certainly a kernel of truth to this notion. As an editor, I love the feeling of showing someone something that they didn’t know, of delivering the you-are-not-going-to-believe-this moment. And yes, many of those tales lie in the realm of extraordinary achievement. But sometimes—no, not sometimes, often—the human condition is just as compelling, just as complex. You just have to look a little harder to find that story and to convince that person that yes, you have the power of touching a lot of people.
I found such a story on page 68 of the summer 2007 issue. It was a class note about a woman, someone my age, who was a teacher and college counselor in the San Francisco Bay area. Anne Harris ’93 had left her job, though, to do something any one of us would do: fight for the life of her two-year-old son.
Anne and I subsequently spoke—many times over a period of weeks—about sharing her story with her classmates and other Middlebury graduates. Not too long ago, she was just like so many of them—an English major who loved Shakespeare, a Middkid who developed lifelong friendships, a mother and educator who nurtured both a child and a legion of adolescents. “I pray that no one else has to go through what we’ve been through,” she told me. “But I also know that some will. If this story can help them in any way ...”
“Life, Interrupted” is a Middlebury story, one that touches both the mind and the heart. What Anne took from Middlebury—the ability to turn a phrase, the skill to translate life’s rhythms into poetry, the courage to face the unimaginable—she gives back selflessly so that maybe, hopefully, others will learn something. And who among us wouldn’t do the same thing?
—Matt Jennings