Levi Deatrick

I was in sixth grade at Rochester Hills Christian School near Detroit, Michigan, when I was assigned my first writing project. It was my 6th grade year and the 1987 and 1988 school year. I loved history and research but I did not love the actual writing; I was left handed and had sweaty hands and so whether I wrote with pen or pencil the result was terrible smudging. It would not be until late high school that I actually began to enjoy putting words on paper – and that was because I had taken a typing class in high school (Mrs. Beckert at Southeastern Community College in Keokuk, IA). In college I got a word processor and soon after a laptop computer. Over the last 38 years (since 6th grade), I have written dozens of papers for colleges, universities, and seminaries – including a thesis and dissertation. I have had a blog and website for around 20 years. I love to write (type); it is my most natural way of communication.

I have many times thought about that 6th grade project. It was a research paper on the lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright. I believe that my class had taken a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum with the Wright Brothers’ Home and Bicycle Shop that had been relocated there. Whatever the actual place of our field trip might have been, I was able to get a few Wright Brothers postcards and papers and it initiated in me a lifelong interest in their lives. I found a few books from the school library and perhaps a local library with my mom. I also read of the Wright Brothers in our family collection of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia. I remember working diligently on that paper – loving the reading, research and planning, but dreading and disliking the actual writing – because I had to contend with a sweaty left hand and blurred ink. Strangely, I couldn’t remember if I earned a good grade on the paper.

I’ve often wondered what happened to that paper. I remember that I had kept it for a little while and even thought I had seen it a time or two after we moved from Michigan back to Missouri when I was a young teenager. Today, my Mom drove down to St. Louis to celebrate our church anniversary with us. She walked into my office before the Sunday School hour and held up the green folder which held my 6th grade Wright Brothers research paper. She said to me, “do you remember this?” I instantly recognized what she was holding and my heart – if not my face – broke into a huge grin! “I have wondered where that was for years” I said to her! She and Dad have been “culling” their garage attic storage and they found it this week!

I could hardly wait to look through and read it again when we got home from church this evening. I read it, Carol looked through it, my son who is following in my steps as a reader and lover of history (and the Wright Brothers) examined it. I uploaded it to Chatgpt for an analysis – part of the response was to point out what a good teacher (Mrs. Griffin) I had in 6th grade who had such high expectations for an elementary/middle school research paper and what a well supplied library (Mrs. White – I believe) my school must have had to have possessed the books that I used for my selected bibliography.

One often hears things regarding early education like “you’ll never use that in real life.” But I know that paper – the research, the planning, and even the writing of it, was formative in my development. I feel like a piece of the mosaic of my life was gifted back to me today. God graciously preserved that paper in my parent’s attic for several decades to return to me in His due time – 38 years later to be precise.

Now my wife wants me to start writing in cursive again…

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: books, writing | Leave a comment »