Marlin Charles Foxworth – December 8, 1942 – February 4, 2022 

As I wrote, “Why I Write” for the “About” section on my website, my memory of Mr. Foxworth, the only name by which I ever knew him, naturally formed within my mind, and in my words written in pencil upon the paper before me.  As I wrote of Mr. Foxworth, a tribute to him naturally emerged with the description of my interactions with him, and within my thoughts and conclusions concerning the person I came to understand him to be.  I first considered writing an entirely separate posting centering solely upon him but decided my words of him were best framed in the greater context of why I write, because that is in fact where he is embedded within my life.

I wrote the “Why I Write” section under deadline for my website developer and I sent it off without a few final “polishing” rewrites, and it was posted in the “About” section as one of the improvements I had requested for the website.  I asked a friend from my high school days to see if he could find an email address for Mr. Foxworth, which he did, and he sent me three addresses that all seemed current.  I then decided that before I sent Mr. Foxworth an email informing him that I had written of how he had been one of the primary influences in moving my mind and life towards writing, I decided I first needed to polish further the posting where I mentioned him.  If I am telling him that he was influential in my writing life, I wanted to make sure my writing was as excellent as I could make it – I didn’t want to insult him with schlocky writing.  So, I polished the section three more times and then sent him an email – to all three addresses!  I introduced myself as someone he may not even remember – our interactions were more than fifty years ago – and I informed him of how I had written of his influence in my life, and where he could find the paragraphs on my website.  I added my website link and sent the emails off to him.

Later that evening, all three of the email messages came back to me as undeliverable.  I was disappointed and a little surprised but decided to take another Internet look as far as I was able, to see if I could find another electronic way of contacting him.  On the first page of search results for his name, I surprisingly discovered an obituary listing for him.  The obituary link opened to a mortuary page that carried a message that an obituary was not available, which disappointed me, but I discovered from his dates, that he had died about six weeks before I sent him these emails, and, strangely sad for me, just about a week before the tribute paragraphs to him originally posted on my website.

On the mortuary page, there was a Tribute Wall, and opening it, l saw there was only one tribute to Mr. Foxworth, which I thought was sad, so eventually on the Tribute Wall I posted the three paragraphs I had written about Mr. Foxworth preceded by a short introductory statement that ended with, “On the Internet, I found this Mortuary listing of his death, and so now I send this to his tribute wall so that at least I have given some testimony to his influence and encouragement in my life.”

Below are the three paragraphs from the “Why I Write Section” where I give tribute to Mr. Foxworth. 

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I do not write under compulsion, but I write as I breathe, a natural yet vital function of my existence.  Writing was first introduced to me in 1st grade when I learned how to spell my name, Christopher – a name that I soon excitedly found had many smaller words within it, ten at least, not forgetting to count the “I” and allowing the “O”.  Writing then slowly grew but truly opened up for me in a much broader form in 8th grade when my favorite and most influential grammar school teacher, Sister Mary Thomas, invited Mr. Foxworth, the school’s part-time athletic coach, to teach writing to our class one afternoon each week.  I was enthralled from the first lesson.  I was intrigued by Mr. Foxworth, a recent college graduate when he came to my Catholic grammar school, because he was the first male teacher that I had ever had up to that point, even if he was with us only once a week.  I was also very engaged with what he taught about writing, and even though I do not remember anything of the actual content of the class, he did not teach us grammar, but rather he opened something much larger to us, building somehow an expanded sense of the world around us and our interaction with it.  Sometimes we had little writing assignments, and I seem to remember him once calling my name out to find where I was seated, and when he came up to me to return my paper, he said a few words about how good my paper was as he handed it back to me.  I was surprised and even taken aback by his words, as they were so unexpected and public, and he thus joined Sister Mary Thomas as the only other teacher from whom I ever remember receiving praise in grammar school.  It was probably the praise and encouragement from each that drew me to them and that made such a lasting impression upon me. 

I would later have Mr. Foxworth as one of my English teachers in high school, and I would later come to refer to him in my mind as, “one of the last of the angry young men”, a description I am not now sure from where it was derived, perhaps something I read about literature, but it was an honest and true compliment on my part towards him.  I was never befriended by him, nor by any other teacher for that matter except Sister Mary Thomas, and he was never even truly aware of me individually beyond a few unique personal interactions between us.  But when I asked him in my senior year if he would write one of the two recommendations I needed for my college applications, he eventually wrote one, after a few polite yet hesitant reminders on my part.  I don’t remember if I actually saw the recommendation, but it must have also been more than adequate, as I was accepted to the University of California, Riverside, on a full four-year scholarship.  Now being one of six children from a low-income family was probably a significant factor for the award of the scholarship, but I first had to be admitted to the university, and for whatever part Mr. Foxworth’s recommendation played in that process, I have always been thankful. 

Mr. Foxworth was not without his human faults and foibles, true, but in my mind these issues made him more real and unique and even more accessible as a person.  For whatever his mood – which always seemed tied into women and the politics of the day – he was always honest and genuine in how he treated you and responded, and I just instinctively trusted him to be himself, which says volumes about him as a teacher and a person, as this was my evaluation of him as a teenage boy in high school.  And then, with just the few classes, interactions and times together, he imparted a quiet lasting influence on my life, even though he was never aware of it.  Perhaps it was the fact that few teachers – just two – took a real positive interest in my life, that this also helped make his passion for writing and his intense personality leave such an enduring impression and encouragement within me.  So, because when I was thirteen, I received the initial encouragement and the vision to write from Mr. Foxworth, this is one of the reasons I embark on seriously writing now.

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I was asked why I prepared this posting as Mr. Foxworth had already died and will not read what I wrote, and also these paragraphs are already on my website for others to read if they so wish.  To some it may seem a redundant exercise, but I have written this and posted it for a number of reasons.  One is the reason already stated – to give public testimony to Mr. Foxworth’s influence and encouragement in my life.  The same reason why I posted the paragraphs also on his tribute wall.

Another reason is to offer Mr. Foxworth as a much-needed example of someone who because of his convictions and the person that he had become, encouraged and inspired me to write when I was a short skinny thirteen-year-old kid in eighth grade. And when he was my English teacher in high school, he also treated me – just one of his many students, essentially a nobody to most – with his version of respect, equity, and kindness even, which eventually opened up many doors for me.  He didn’t do anything absolutely special for me, but what he did, he did well and was very important to me and my life, and he did it all with a kindness based on conviction. 

Mr. Foxworth was not a perfect person, and who is, but he was essentially the God-given perfect person for me at two very critical times in my life.  I cannot conceive of being where I am today, and who I am today, without Mr. Foxworth having been in my life.

And I offer him now as an example to all, as a person, who, because he was passionate and kind, made an impression upon me for my lasting good with just a few interactions and words.  Oh, that many young people would have a Mr. Foxworth walk into their lives! And that those so blessed would understand the greatness of this gift given to them, with the result that they may come to possess the wisdom, maturity, and grace to become a Mr. Foxworth for others.  Yes, these words are why I am posting this tribute here in my website. 

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