To: Jim Lehrer
Dear Professor Lehrer:
I took a Creative Writing course from you many years ago at SMU. On the first day of class you asked your students to give a little background information and what, if anything, they had written. I said that I had written lots of computer programs but nothing else.
In one of our assignments I described a big, black mare that we had on our farm. She was a plow horse, a Percheron, and she was retired by the time I really got to know her. She was the only horse we had, and she was going blind. I wrote about how we little boys could ride her bareback until she decided to buck us off. In the summer heat she would be irritated by flies and would run across the pasture. Her heavy hooves could be heard quite a distance. The pasture was very hard because of the drought. Anyhow, she disappeared and after a day or so, my mother sent me out to look for her. I found her in a creek that ran along the edge of the pasture quite a distance from the house. She had gone over an embankment and broken her neck. I think she was probably running from the flies and did not see the creek. We called the rendering plant at the county seat and they took her away. They gave us a rain gauge for her.
My best memories of her involve my father harnessing her up and plowing our four large gardens in the spring. We had a tractor but Poppa liked to use the mare.
When I told this story in your class I wrote that she “must have weighed a ton.” After you read our stories you discussed some of them in class. You read the part of my story where I said how heavy the mare must have been. Then you called on another student, who was, as I remember, a veterinarian, and asked him if it was possible for a horse to weigh that much. He said that it probably did not. You said to the class that we should be sure to check details like that. It was good advice, but it was advice I already knew. When one writes computer programs for a living one learns the value of checking all the details, each and every one.
At one point in your class you said that if any of us ever wrote anything you would be happy to take a look at it. I have written a book and it is at the publisher’s right now. I hope that when it comes out in the next two or three months that you will take a look at it. After all, you have had something to do with its quality or lack thereof.
But the real reason for my letter is that over the years, as I watched you on the air, I would recall your advice about checking details. One thing about that advice has always bothered me. It is that you apparently did not take your own advice. Percheron’s can and often do weigh a ton. It seems to me that you decided that my facts were wrong without personal knowledge on your part, and without checking the soundness of your source. He might have been a small animal vet and had no more knowledge about Percherons than any of us. It is just possible that I had more knowledge than you or him about Percherons. This did not bother me so much as the thought that you assumed that your instincts were correct. So, over the years as I watched your show, I would worry that your facts might not be correct, or might be shaded a little to fit into your world view. You had a hard job, and you had lots of help, but I still worry even today.
As you know, teachers have a long effect on their students, and I am one example.
Anyhow, I enjoyed your class very much and I watched your TV shows as often as I could. I am enjoying my retirement very much and I hope you are as well.
Very Truly Yours,
JHestal
I sent him a copy of my book, but I never heard from him.