Lillian Babb had a profound impact on my life and career

If you ever get the chance to employ one of your former teachers, then I highly recommend giving it a try.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

Several years back, Lillian Babb, who was my high school journalism teacher for two years, my sophomore English teacher and my senior German teacher, did some freelance writing for us here at the News Journal.

She would print out her stories and bring them in for me to proofread. I would sit at my desk smiling as I would mark up her stories as she watched.

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” she jokingly asked me one day.

“Yes I am!” I replied back to the laughter of both of us.

(My only regret was not getting a red ink pen to use when I marked up her stories … LOL.)

Truth be told, she was a pretty good writer and I didn’t have to mark a lot of things on the feature stories that she would write for us. It was more newspaper stylistic things that are different from traditional English.

Mrs. Babb was one of my favorite teachers at Lynn Camp High School as you might have guessed from four times where she was my teacher, including two different classes my senior year.

Lillian Babb wasn’t one of those rigidly follow the establishment types. Talking to the principal typically put her in need of smoking a cigarette. It is something she did when she would really get stressed out, not that teaching teenagers would ever stress someone out … LOL.

She was a cool teacher, who didn’t get onto students for stupid stuff.

I remember one day in my junior journalism class, she had gone down to the dark room to work on something with a couple of students, and left the rest of us in the classroom to continue working.

There happened to be a television and VCR in the classroom that day. One of my fellow students ran out to his car to get a copy of Beverly Hills Cop II, which he was going to return to the video store after school. He put it in the VCR and we started watching the movie. Mrs. Babb returned to the classroom during a colorful bit of dialog in the movie.

She said simply, “I don’t want to know what you all are watching, do I?”

I believe a few of us, including myself replied, “not really.”

Mrs. Babb picked up what she came in there to get, and left us to continue watching the movie as she headed back down to the darkroom.

There are some people and teachers that you just click with pretty quickly, and for me, she was one of those. We always had a great rapport. I always enjoyed talking with her, and I think she would say the same thing about me.

She was always encouraging, and gave me good feedback even if I might not have always appreciated it at the time … LOL. It made me a better writer though.

Her instruction served me well and gave me a good foundation for my journalism classes in college.

If not for Lillian Babb and her encouragement, then I might not have even become a journalist, which is something that I have been doing professionally for more than 31 years now.

I found out over the weekend that she died Friday at the University of Kentucky Bluegrass Hospice Care Center in Lexington at the age of 76.

I didn’t know that she had been ill.

I’ll conclude this column by paraphrasing a line from one of her favorite authors, Stephen King, and say simply that although I hadn’t seen her in more than 10 years, I know I’ll miss her forever.