I loved him. He had a tremendous impact on my life--not sure I would have turned out as well without him. He was a WWII veteran of the Pacific theater, a gentleman, a class act, a perfectionist, and a strict disciplinarian. He was the most beloved...and hated...teacher at Riverside. I took every course he taught and had to learn how to knit and play chess to play Anne Frank's mother, sang and danced my way through Mame and Dolly, and was Maria in The Sound of Music. We remained close throughout the rest of his life--when my family and I moved to Orlando in '86, he bought a winter home in the Villages and we got together often. In 2005, I was one of the last to speak with him in his final days and was very surprised to have been one of 8 former students named in his will. I was asked to write a remembrance of DWS which was published in the program for the dedication of the auditorium in his name.
He was my "Professor Higgins"--he took this scrawny teenage girl from an alcoholic home and opened my eyes and my heart to the realization that I could achieve my dreams. He held the bar far higher than we thought we could ever reach --and when we did, we gained the confidence and the character to reach further, jump higher, and we took that confidence out into the world. In his final speech to us before opening night of The Sound of Music in 1973, he said, "The perfect way is the only way, and the only way is the perfect way." It was that philosophy which caused many to hate him, all of us to fear him, but it was also the magic that transformed many of our lives! His impact on my life is immeasurable.
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