From today's Times and News-Star
* The author is one of Mr. Hilburn's friends, fans, and (since-college) lifelong students. The two are pictured below, at Wiley's Retirement Reception (from LA Tech) in 2008. They are talking about fashion wear and how soon they can leave this party.
Wiley Wilson Hilburn Jr.
(Feb 20, 1938-Jan. 16, 2014)
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In
the mid-1970s in Wiley Hilburn’s creative writing class, a young journalism
student turned in a paper that contained, most unfortunately, this phrase:
“…the frost-kissed turnips.”
What
Wiley wrote on his paper – he had some classics when he was advising students
-- was this, though I paraphrase, but only slightly:
“You
are from a big city in Arkansas. The only thing you know about greens is from
crayons and the grass your daddy made you mow. You know little about frost and
probably nothing about kissing. Three strikes. Write what you KNOW!”
Hello.
That
gentleman went on to become a fine photo-journalist, another in a long line of Louisiana
Tech students who learned from the pen and the mind and the patience – and the
good heart -- of Wiley Hilburn, a treasure for north Louisiana in general and for
Ruston in particular.
Even
though he’d been sick with cancer, his passing last Thursday, peacefully at
noon at age 75, came as a surprise. He’d been frail since his cancer had been
in remission, but still he’d meet us to eat, go to ballgames on campus, drink
coffee with his buddies at the Huddle House. He was still All Wylie. But his
immune system was so weak that he had little gas in the tank to fight the
pneumonia, and after three days of holding on, he was gone.
I
feel sorry for his friends and his family and sorry for his readers, who knew
they’d always get an honest effort from Wylie, whose column appeared regularly
in these pages for more than 30 years. Sometimes he was politically polarizing
and sometimes, writing of pork soup and pomegranates and green-gabled roofs, he’d
just hold up a mirror to your memory, cause you to stop and really see
something, something important and needed, something you’d missed, though right
in front of your eyes.
For
most of us, our faults are irritating. Wiley’s were endearing: he couldn’t
park, often wrecked his car, more often than that was late, laughed at his
absent-mindedness and lacked anything even remotely resembling a sense of
direction.
In
other words, he was each of us, only better. And if he was your friend, you did
not have one more loyal or sincere.
Practically,
his instruction for writing was simple, yet hard to pull off:
Work
at writing: no magic writing butterfly is going to sprinkle magic writing dust
on you;
Write
what you know. Your readers aren’t stupid; don’t prove to them you are;
Use
significant detail: What did the guy look like? Did he fidget when he talked?
What is the setting? The sounds and textures? The mood? What makes this place
or this person different from every other?
And
sometimes, a writer has to take his shirt off: the only way to make people feel
less lonely is to show them that you’ve been there too. It’s about honesty, not
self-loathing. But that’s your job. If it were easy, everybody would be doing
it. Wiley was a man who, like Robert Frost, “was acquainted with the night.” He
was not afraid to write in the dark.
Wiley
endeared himself to his students, certainly to readers, by the way he shared
the truth. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was honest, efficient and
compelling. We students trusted Wiley because he proved to us he knew what he
was talking about, and he proved to us he cared, genuinely, about us, whether
we were Hemingway wannabes, frustrated athletes, aspiring business pros or
“just wanting to pass journalism class.”
One
day long ago in the parking lot outside Tech’s George T. Madison Hall, “Mr.
Hilburn” encouraged me to get, well, a college major. He’d heard I had good
grades in English. He offered me a spot on The
Tech Talk. And he gave me the two best lessons I’ve ever had in writing,
right there: “It’s hard work,” he said, and “let’s stick to writing what you
know.” And then, thankfully, he said this: “I’ll help you.” He put me on the
sports staff. He coached me up. He built my confidence. As busy as he was –
with family, with writing, with teaching and with just being Wiley -- he showed
me he cared about me. As it is with good writing, good living means showing,
not just telling. Wiley was good at both, at the writing and, infinitely more
important, at the living.
As
enjoyable and influential as he was as a teacher, his greatest gift, at least
to me, was that he was, through the years, 100 percent Wiley, 100 percent of
the time. It takes knowing exactly where you live, who you are and who you love
to pull that off, and still it’s harder than it looks. That’s why so few people
do it.
Wiley
did.
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