If Not You, Who?

Dedicated to: Kerrie, Claire, and Margaret Bingham

This is Dr. Derick Bingham, the most inspirational professor I have ever had. He passed away this week after battling cancer for a number of years, and as glad as I am that he is no longer suffering, I think that this world is a duller place in his absence. Dr. Bingham was the first teacher who truly believed in me as a writer. He taught Masterpieces of Irish Literature to the Irish Studies group last semester. Through him I learned to fall more in love with CS Lewis, I learned to appreciate the poets of Ireland like Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, and I learned what it looks like to dream again. Derick took the papers that I turned into him and used them to encourage me, to show me that I could be a writer after all.

I remember leaving his classes wanting nothing more than to sit and journal and write for hours. He inspired me and he is my inspiration still.

He would quote us this little stanza at least once a week while we were at lunch or sitting drinking tea. He would say, "If not you, who.

If not now, when.

If not here, where"

I still remember the first day that I met him. His eyes were always shining and full of life and hope and dreams of the future. He was never like my other professors. He was always a few notches more passionate, more extreme, more excited, more in love with God than the others. The first day I met him, I remember him staring out at the lake behind Lakeside Manor and saying, "God did not bring you all the way across the Atlantic to drown you in a ditch. He has plans for you." That quote kept me alive in times of homesickness and despair that I faced during those three months.

Derick Bingham didn't decide to teach us JBU students because he was asked to, or because he needed the extra money. No, he taught us because he wanted to teach us how to love writing with our whole hearts. He said that first day, "With all of my heart and soul, I am going to try to convince you to start writing." And there was something in his eyes, in the way his hands flew around him in excited uncontrolled motions, something in the determined scrunching of his brow...I knew that he meant it.

Fall in love I did. I fell in love with writing, with the dream of getting published, with Ireland, and with Derick Bingham himself.