On Feb. 28 we welcome former Kiwanis member and retired Collegiate School teacher Lewis Lawson. He will be discussing “Epiphanies in Literature: Lessons from the High School Classroom.” Lawson served Collegiate as an Upper School English teacher and coach (mostly football and track) from 1972 through 2013.

Lawson was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and spent his summers in Wytheville, Virginia, living with his Grandmother when not at Camp Wallawhatoola in Bath County. Educated in public schools in Charleston, he later graduated from Christchurch School and then Hamilton College in 1969. After a year of teaching, which he loved, he decided it would be wise to broaden his experience. So off to Europe he went, bought a motorcycle, and traveled around the continent for three months.

Upon return, he took a banking job and then later, one as a manager of a construction company. But the teaching bug returned when Collegiate School offered him an English position and one in coaching football, basketball, and track which he performed for 42 years, 45 all told with his other teaching positions. Over those years he taught a wide range of subjects: Ancient Greek Drama to Modern Poetry, Shakespearian Theatre to American Literature, Advanced Grammar to British Literature, Religious Archetypes in Literature to Asian Literature.

During this span he received many grants to study at numerous institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin, and Charles University Prague. Since retirement in 2013 he started a lecture series based off the old western Paladin (“Have Gun, Will Travel “). He aptly named his program “Have Talk, Will Travel”. His lectures have taken him to places like Memphis University School and West Virginia University and to programs like the William Styron Festival in Newport News. Yet, as he boasts, his greatest claim to fame is his Brother Fontaine Lawson, who has guided him for 75 years, and Mary Gill, his wife of fifty years who has allowed him to do these many study programs over the years!