THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 1, 1996 TAG: 9605310073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: 34 lines
ONCE UPON A TIME, when I was in the fifth grade at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Va., children's book illustrator Wesley Dennis came to a school assembly to deliver a ``chalk talk.''
I had no idea what a chalk talk was, but I well knew Wesley Dennis. He had drawn the incredibly animate pictures of horses that accompanied Marguerite Henry's classic ``Misty of Chincoteague.'' That book, about the Eastern Shore pony-penning and a child's determination to own one, galloped across the beaches of my brain.
The pictures in it, like the prose, moved.
Dennis was a deity. I had no idea how such an august personage could possibly have been prevailed upon to show up at our obscure little school. I suspect he was related to somebody on the staff and came as a favor.
The chalk talk turned out to be a free-wheeling discussion by the artist who, with magic marker in hand, dashed off sudden visions on big pages at an easel while we watched, mesmerized.
Dennis turned out to be as powerful as his pictures, which he sent sailing out on the spot like kites to lucky kids in the crowd.
He conveyed two crucial messages:
Read!
And draw!
I have never forgotten Wesley Dennis, though I can't recall many, many more famous speakers whose less impressive orations I have sat through since.
He was a magician who, before our very eyes, turned white paper into windows.
We flew through.
- Bill Ruehlmann by CNB