Farewell to James Ballowe
By Edgar Chapman

When Jim Ballowe announced his retirement last year, I felt mixed emotions.  I was happy that Jim would be freed from the responsibilities of teaching in order to pursue his continuing literary interests, but I felt regret because of the retirements of Jim and Peggy Carter, our gracious chairperson for the nineties, for several reasons--not the least being that I will be the senior member of the English Department, certainly a dubious honor. However, I mainly felt regret because my experience has shown me the importance of Jim Ballowe to the Department.  Coming here in 1963, the same year as Jim and Peggy, I have been able to see the impact of both on the English program for over thirty five years.

Our first year was a memorable one, since the new faculty in English were quartered in an old house called the “Speech Therapy Annex,” with Bradley Hall being reconstructed after the great fire.  After we moved into the renovated Bradley Hall and the saintly but conservative Olive B. White retired from being chair, we were able to push curriculum changes quickly. As the leading professor of American literature, Jim was the prime mover in many of these changes, creating courses in the American Renaissance and American Modernism.  Students found Jim’s lectures on modern novelists--not only Hemingway and Faulkner, but also Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, and Forster--actual revelations.  With Jim’s guidance, students found that modernist authors could help them make sense of the confusions they met.  Jim’s admiration for post-modern experimental fiction by writers such as William Gass and  Robert Coover also led to campus visits by many of the leading writers of the mid-century.

In the seventies, Jim became English Department Chairperson, a well-earned reward for his leadership as a teacher and a scholar.  His essays on Santayana, the collection of essays he edited for the University of Illinois Press, and his modernist poetry set an example for the rest of us.  When he was appointed Dean of the Graduate School, he worked for more than a decade to improve the School’s image, and he oversaw the creation of the Master of Liberal Studies program. He also gave valuable service to the North Central Accreditation program, and in the eighties he served as Dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts.

Nevertheless, his interest in teaching and in the English Department brought him back to the fourth floor of Bradley Hall in the nineties, and his has served as a mentor and model for younger faculty.  He has served as Director of the Graduate Program, developed an American Studies minor, and supported a new minor in Professional Writing.  His course in Autobiography and Creative Non-Fiction requires students to write thoughtful and imaginative essays about their own experiences, and he has established the “Ballowe Personal Essay” award.  In 1997, his efforts as a teacher were recognized by the University when it bestowed upon him the coveted Putnam Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Although Jim will retire in Spring 1999,  his imaginative writing is at its peak.  During the last few years, he has produced spirited essays about the cultural life of downstate Illinois, such as his lively introduction to the biography of the notorious Charlie Birger and his essay on the Herrin massacre for The Chicago Reader and National Public Radio.  Educated at Milliken and the University of Illinois, Jim has always been a regionalist in the best sense of the word.  For Jim, the prairie is a much a mythic landscape as it was for Carl Sandburg or as western Kentucky was for Robert Penn Warren.  No doubt, in his retirement Jim Ballowe will continue to produce essays and poems about downstate Illinois. In the meantime, his influence in the Bradley English Department will be missed by friends, students, and colleagues. Edgar Chapman. HOME