John Marson Dunaway,
French and Interdisciplinary Studies,
Mercer University

[Mar.4, 2012]–

I first arrived at Mercer, a freshly-minted young Ph.D., an assistant professor of French, painfully aware of how many of the great books of the Western world I had yet to read.

One of the greatest evidences of God’s providential care for me during my teaching career was that my closest colleague at Mercer for the first two decades of my tenure was a Frenchwoman named Denise Juillard whose literary and spiritual interests were strikingly similar to my own. During the job interview I learned that she had met Julien Green. Green was born in Paris to American parents whose deeply Southern roots imbued his French writings, including his masterpiece Moira , with a yearning for place.

Green was the novelist who was the subject of my dissertation. My colleague Denise, I learned, encountered Green in such a remarkable way that he had described the encounter in his published Journal. Eventually, Denise married the French novelist Vladimir Volkoff, and I had the privilege of becoming one of his many American friends.

Motivating Exchanges

Denise and I arranged to lunch together about once a week in the campus snack-bar, where we enjoyed animated conversations in French. It was great for my vocabulary and fluency, but it was also a chance to be mentored by a wise colleague who had an unusually rich knowledge of literature and the arts.

During these fascinating dialogues with Denise, she would often mention a book she had enjoyed and ask me if I’d read it. My frequent embarrassed negative response was never greeted by a supercilious or sarcastic attitude on her part. Instead, she always said something like: “Oh, well, I envy your having that great pleasure to look forward to.” Such an admirably gracious remark had the effect of inspiring and encouraging me and was one of the most endearing qualities of this wonderful colleague and friend.

Humility Modeled

In the academic world, it’s a constant temptation to allow our knowledge to make us want to lord it over those who are less well-read than we are. Saint Paul, who was one of the best-educated men of his time, however, wrote in I Corinthians 8:1 that “knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies.”

Though Denise speaks several languages and has read many more of the great books than I, she had the kindness and humility to be an encourager for me during the formative years of my teaching career. I’ll always be grateful to her for that generosity of spirit. While I learned a wealth of French language and culture from her, I also learned from her example that a good mentor must be a gracious encourager.

What quality have you found most helpful in your mentors?

(c) 2012 John Marson Dunaway
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