Wake Forest University - Howler Yearbook (Winston Salem, NC)

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HUBERT McNEILL POTEAT, M.A., Ph.D | HEN one sits down to assay the per- sonality of Hubert McNeill Poteat as a part of Wake Forest, the thing which leaves more impression than any other is the man ' s eloquent love for the school and the things for which it stands. Hubert Poteat was born in Wake Forest and has lived much of his life here. And like his father before him, in the face of many and attractive offers from other and larger institutions, he has stayed here because he has wanted to. Probably no other plan ' s name has become more synonymous with the name of Wake Forest itself than has his during the last generation and a half. He has taught Latin and life here for forty years — taught Latin, to paraphrase Alice Duer Miller, better than college students repay. A ranking classical scholar in this country and rec- ognized abroad, a composer and lover of music, a faithful Mason and fraternity man, Dr. Poteat will longest remain in the memory of the students who have sat in his classes — and there have been thousands of them — as a superb teacher, the sort of man that scholar- ship which is not pedantry creates in its happiest moods. Through the years the Wake Forest Latin class- rooms have become places alive because Poteat is, as the real teacher must be. possessed of a superlative sense of drama — a professor with the soul and the ability of a fine actor. Cicero and Horace, Vergil and Juvenal. Caesar and Livy, Brer Rabbit and L ' ncle Remus and De Lawd from The Green Pastures have be- come under his touch at once alive and unforgettable. Perhaps his students will soon forget the differences between a gerund and a gerundive, but they will never forget his insistence that, in his own words, the verb to teach in Latin takes two accusatives — and the boy comes first. But there is more than this to the great teacher. And this man has drilled learning into our heads with infinite patience and high good humor — learning of the liberal spirit even more than of the letter. Poteat has called us dumbheads and henbrains and illiterates and other such terms of endearment and we ' ve known them to be true to a degree — and we ' ve loved him for having the temerity to address undergraduates in such words. We ' ve watched his bearing and held our heads a little higher, proud we knew him. We ' ve listened to his amazing use of the English language and have trotted to the dictionary the more frequently because of it. We ' ve heard him say, so often, that the older he grows the more quietly assured he becomes of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul of man — and have because of his leadership been the more emboldened ourselves to seek God. His students have listened to his organ playing and have sung in his choirs and have played chess with him and listened to his yearly reading of The Green Pastures for his literary society, thrilled and reverent. They have looked to him for guidance and have not found it lacking. Hubert McNeill Poteat, at once the terror and the delight of his students, a devoted husband and father (and grandfather), a valued and loyal friend, a great and good man — to him is this issue of the annual of his Alma Mater dedicated with affection and respect. 72134