I didn't really connect with Jack until 1981 when he flew into Nashville to work several schools gearing up to sell the second edition of UDL2. Up to this point, Jack was the Crazy Horse editor I'd seen and heard at NSMs presenting textbooks with lackluster sales until the Miller LITE blockbuster. So, hoping to repeat this feat, Jack published a bigger and badder revision of UDL1 and was armed and ready to rumble on a cold Monday morning in January at MTSU with 2000 copies in his sights. Up to this point, I'd worked with a handful of editors including Ken, McD, and Gormley but none as single-minded as Jack. This was Jack's WWII D-Day Omaha beach landing and I was his platoon commander doing logistics and reconniassance for each visit; he loved it when you provided him meaningful bread crumbs, making his pathway more exacting. We were a tag team, crusaders genuflecting every prof we met like medieval knights calling on academic nobility. I loved how Jack ingratiated himself with each bioperson calculating yeas and nays as we huddled in hallways and stairways treking our way yet another office, back and forth, in and out, nonstop—a body in rest stays in rest, a body in motion stays in motion—Jack was an information jeteye, detecting and recording everything; his memory shorthand was phenomenal!
For the next decade, the script was the same, divide and conquer with precision and impeccable accuracy every open non-major biology adoption in Tennessee and Kentucky. He made scores of friends and fans, including me, loved the South, and when I told his biomass he was coming back, they couldn't wait, lunches became the norm. Jack was the ultimate chameleon and gentle soul among these folks, there was mutual respect, hard won and kept. My people were always impressed when an editor from a distant publishing house would make the journey to their place and Jack reveled in their adulation and admiration while earning capital.
What a combo, Jack and Cecie, arguably the best editor/author duo in the business, nothing like before or after, truly a model of professional humanity.
Let's play the Fallen Soldier Bagpipe Tribute to Jack:
"Going home, going home,
I'm just going home.
Quiet-like, slip away-
I'll be going home."
Mark
1 comment:
How will I ever stop crying, Mark. When Jack was off and running in the Spring, he checked in late every night, maybe to find out if I was still up and scribbling everything he wanted to see in the new edition, but for sure to ask if I would marry him all over again. He would recap the high points of his day, and that is how I first learned he was in awe of you, his close comrade, the quintessential gentleman of the South. Thank you for your poignant tribute, dear friend. -Cecie
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