.
Patricia
McGuire - aka Pat Rock aka Sister Louis Marie
Hardly the kind of
credentials that would make one like me, someone lost in the creative explosion
of thought and world affairs, shed a tear.
But this Patricia McGuire was
no ordinary teacher and I was no ordinary kid, or so she said.
Pat died last April 29, 2013 in Selinsgrove,
Pennsylvania. Our last conversation was just a few months
earlier when she told me she was not feeling well but still wanted me to come
up and see her. I
hoped to make the trip this past summer.
Her obit was impressive but grossly understated. It went as follows:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Pat was a lifelong
educator and held teaching positions from grade schools to professorships at
St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, N.Y., and New York University in New
York City. She was a specialist in the works of Shakespeare and taught legions
of students about his poetry and plays. She was the inventor of the Great
Grammarian, a successful board game she developed to teach the nuances of
grammar skills, a particular interest of Pat’s over many years.
She was born in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and grew up in a
large, loving and joy-filled family.
Pat was an active member of
her religious community, the Sisters of Humility, Davenport,
Iowa, and
served in many roles over the course of her life. She was a faith-filled and
loving member of the church, a zealous proponent of peace and justice and an
unflagging opponent of their absence in her world view. Above all else, she was
a gentle woman whose legacy to her family and friends was in her modeling of
the Christian ideals. She will be greatly missed but held forever in our
hearts.
THE GREAT GRAMMARIAN(R) Home School
Edition is a junior version of an adult educational game that has been used by
many Fortune 500 companies to train their employees. These games were developed
by Patricia Rock, who has taught English from elementary through graduate
school. She currently teaches graduate and undergraduate courses at New York University, and has also been a national
consultant in Written Communications for over twenty years. She has received
numerous grants and awards and has been a speaker for a variety of national
associations.
Longtime Gallatin faculty
member Pat Rock died
on April 29 in Selinsgrove,
Pennsylvania. She was 83 years
old and had taught at Gallatin
for 25 years. She was one of the first recipients of Gallatin’s Excellence in Teaching Award just
before her retirement in 2011. “Pat was one of our great teachers,” said Dean
Susanne Wofford. “Year after year, her courses--Shakespeare and the Uses of
this World, The Medieval Mind, The Meaning of Home, The Simple Life--filled to
capacity, and in their evaluations students praised Pat not only for her
knowledge and passion, but for her profound
impact on their lives.”
She was born in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and over the years she
was a grade school teacher as well as a professor at St. Thomas Aquinas College
in Sparkill, New York, and at Gallatin. A specialist in the works of
Shakespeare, she also invented a board game called the Great Grammarian, to
teach the fine points of grammar. She is survived by a brother, James McGuire,
a sister, Kathleen McGuire Pareti, many nieces and nephews as well as friends
and colleagues.
“Pat had such a special spirit,” said Gallatin Professor Steve Hutkins, “loving,
caring, giving, selfless and sweet. She was always so there, so
present. She truly loved teaching at Gallatin,
and we are fortunate that she had such a long career here. We will miss her
dearly, but her spirit will forever be a part of this place.”
“Pat loved teaching and loved her students,” said
Professor June Foley, “and she inspired not only students but
colleagues--especially me. Her Shakespeare courses and the courses she created,
The Meaning of Home and The Simple Life, opened hearts and minds and changed
lives. And she practiced what she preached: On retiring to her Pennsylvania home, she
launched a passionate, full-time campaign against fracking. How many truly good
people have any of us known? Pat was the rare real thing.”
“Pat and I spent two weeks in France,”
recalled Professor Jean Graybeal, “exploring Paris,
visiting friends, basking in a saltwater spa on the Mediterranean.
Pat was happy to be wherever we found ourselves, thrilled with every meal, able
to fall asleep in minutes on a futon, ready for changes of plan, changes of
mind, changes of weather. Flexible, free, open, curious, communicative; when I
asked her to be sure to say if she had some wishes or preferences her response
was this: “I’m like the little three-year-old who had never talked. When they
finally asked him why, he answered: ‘Everything has been fine so far.’”
Something tells me that everything is still fine with her; it is only we who
need time to adjust to this latest change.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ROCK RAPIDS -
In 1871, Patrick and James McGuire were the first known Catholics of the
original 13 families in central Lyon
County. I bet they were the ancestors of Patricia
McGuire of Rock Rapids, Iowa.
Nice words
were written about her but wholly inadequate for the contributions Pat made to
us, those fortunate enough to have been taught by her.
I first was
her pupil in 6th grade in Ottumwa,
Iowa, St. Mary's School. At the time I felt she targeted me for
torture. In time I came to understand
she was doing it out of fear that we were not learning from her.
In my senior
year in high school she came back and she pushed just as hard but with college
and Viet Nam
facing me I stopped fighting her and grew to really appreciate the knowledge,
discipline and persistence she sought in us so we might understand and master
such boring things like grammar, punctuation and spelling.
There was the
explosion of creative thought she worked to instill in us and the appreciation
for all the poets, writers, philosophers, musicians, playwrights and anyone who
understood the sheer power of words and grammar.
Because of Pat words
became my best friends and the proper care and feeding of words my passion in
life. Now most stories like this end
with the former student coming out of the woodwork to say how much Pat had
influenced their life back in high school.
For me, my second time
having her as my teacher was only the beginning, not the end of an ongoing
relationship that lasted over four decades.
About 20 years after being taught by her in high school I wound up in New Jersey working for
the governor.
Destiny had an old
classmate contact me to say she heard Sister Louis Marie left the nunhood and
was a teacher at NYU in downtown Manhattan,
just across the river from where I worked at the time.
So I tracked her down and
found she was teaching all these fascinating courses at NYU under the name Pat
Rock, and it seemed every class was filled long before open enrollment started.
One day we met for coffee
in Greenwich Village to renew our friendship and about once a month I journeyed
to Manhattan
for tea, or wine, and an endless series of conversations on the world.
By 1991 I was working full
time in New York City and we met often to
discuss her concerns over the collapse of English comprehension and grammar in America and she
never stopped pushing me to expand my mind, focus my creative energy, and do
something to help people.
Many times Pat would bring
other teachers or students to our sessions and they often were Broadway
performers or television and movie producers.
She was surrounded by creative people attracted to her dynamic mind and
heart warming personality.
There were books she
wanted me to write. Places she wanted me
to see. We even started to collaborate
on a fiction story intertwining our respective experiences in life. She laughed at my stories and prodded my
imagination for more. To Pat, life was a
Big Chief Writing Tablet waiting to be filled with words.
In spite of her superstar
status in the world of words one day I asked her if she would edit my first
book, a mystical and spiritual adventure called The Joshua Chronicles. She seemed pleasantly surprised that I might
attempt to string together a couple hundred thousand words and still be
coherent so she said she would at least read it.
A few days later we met
and she said she would edit it, surprising even herself. It needed a lot of work but she had to do it
because I was the only person she ever taught who thought he was a speech writer for God. The book was about the discovery of a missing
journal of a scribe who spent 26 years following Jesus and recording his words
first hand.
She loved the concept
because she felt it was a worthy challenge to my abilities and spiritual
messages needed help to reach people.
Perhaps she loved the concept but she was a ruthless editor as she
convinced me to change the main character from a man to a woman, causing a
rewrite of over one third of the book.
Pat always gave you a
lesson when editing explaining why she suggested changes and how they would
help the reader understand the depth of the message. Her edits made the book far, far better than before
and we were both pleased with the result.
She then edited a second,
third and fourth book for me and said she enjoyed every minute and word because
I was finally starting to get what she started trying to teach me in grade
school, how to appreciate and use words and t0 respect and be aware of their
consequences.
The first, The
Joshua Chronicles, was a work of fiction
about Jesus and the Prince of Darkness.
The second was a massive journal titled Dancing the Tightrope
about kids growing up from birth through high school in the 1950's and 1960's. Autobiographical
as in Irish fiction.
The third was Take
Me Now God!, a fun-filled semi-autobiographical
story about the search for meaning in life and the pitfalls along the
path. I referred to it as enhanced non-fiction.
The final was a historical non-fiction work detailing
the untold history of Communism, Nazism,
Hitler and Stalin using recently declassified and missing documents from
the American, English, French, and Russian archives and the Hitler SS
film footage that disappeared during Hitler's death and the fall of
Berlin. I called it Saviors of the 20th Century,
Hitler & Stalin - the war of annihilation between the Communists and Nazis.
For the first time
"teach" was happy grading my work.
We spent hours going over books, manuscripts, ideas for new works, world
affairs, and her work as a National Consultant in Written Communications.
She was genuinely
concerned that the kids of today were rapidly losing their English and
communication skills. Perhaps this is
where Pat truly stood out from the pack.
Classroom teaching was never enough as I watched her teaching evolve
from grade school to high school to university to Fortune 500 corporate
boardrooms.
By 1979 Pat was a National
Consultant in Written Communications and was employed by many Fortune 500 companies to teach Oral and Written Grammar, Business Writing
and Introduction to Sales Writing.
Her desire to help people
communicate was relentless as her workshops evolved and her games became far
more popular. She was a long time
consultant to The New York Times writers,
editors and executives.
So concerned was Pat about
the disintegrating quality of education, especially in reading and writing, that
she took the Great Grammarian game board she developed in 1985 to teach communication
and grammar to corporate clients and then adapted it for kids in homes and home
schooling.
We horse-traded services,
her editing for my marketing help. From
the mid-1990's on I was her business consultant and she was my editor. Ironically, neither of us liked to talk about
ourselves so we worked together to help each other.
She wanted to pursue
development of a game for homes so parents could learn along with their
kids. I pushed her to do it and over the
years she did develop game boards for corporate, then home and finally home
schooling use.
In 2003 the College Board, administrator of the SAT exams, finally acted on the
continuing decline in English writing and grammar proficiency and revised the
SAT to include "critical reading"
and "writing" components.
When the SAT board
announced they were reinstating Reading
and Grammar into the SAT exam and giving it much greater weigh in the scoring
she was elated and the need for her games became even greater. They could be the difference in SAT scores
and acceptance into the best schools.
The Great Grammarian Home Edition was the result and for generations to come America's youth will benefit from the tireless
and lifelong effort of an Irish girl from Iowa who could never give up on her mission to help prepare kids to make a
difference in our world. A woman
whose love of the arts drove her to encourage kids and adults to pursue careers
in television, film and stage.
To me Pat will always be a
Saint because she devoted her life to
helping others find their potential.
When she didn't feel she was doing enough in the classroom she created
workshops, then games, so that thousands more people could benefit from her
genius. She never gave up on believing
with the right tools for effective communication America could lead the world.
Her contributions will be
felt long after her death because of the thousands of lives she touched through
teaching. It will be felt in the books, movies,
Broadway plays, writers, speakers and others she touched and influenced. She was the epitome of selfless dedication and a model
for humility.
Once when I was pushing
her to give me more of her background in order to help establish the
credentials behind her Game she
wrote me, "This tooting my own horn sounds pretty offensive to me." How could you not love someone like that?
For 2 years when I was young Patricia
McGuire, the brilliant and demanding Irish lass from Rock Springs, Iowa
was my teacher, and for 31 years after I grew up Patricia McGuire was my friend.
Soon, my friend, we will
be seeing you again. As your beloved Shakespeare would say, "If music be the food of love, play on."
.
