Arlington Heights author, mentor connect after 55 years

Jack Martin still remembers a book report on “Catcher in the Rye,” written in pencil, by junior Richard Hawley in his English class at Arlington High School.

It was written in 1961, more than 50 years ago, but Martin can still recite its opening line: “If you really want to know, I loved this book.”

The opening played off the famous opening line from “Catcher in the Rye:” “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me ...”

Martin still can see the budding teenage writer handing the memorable paper in.

“I was so excited about it, I shared it with some of my colleagues in the faculty lounge,” recalls Martin, who later would be principal of Prospect and Forest View high schools and assistant superintendent of Northwest Suburban High School District 214 before he retired.

Late last month, Martin came face to face with his former student at a book signing at the Book Cellar in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood.

Hawley read a segment from his latest book — his 20th — called “The Three Lives of Jonathan Force,” published by Formite Press.

Hawley invited his former teacher to the reading, still crediting him with encouraging his writing way back at Arlington High.

“In those days, creative writing was not offered or required in the standard curriculum, but Mr. Martin was the kind of presence to whom I felt I could show my creative offerings,” Hawley says. ”He was beyond encouraging in his response. He asked for more.

“He loaned me books he thought I would enjoy,” he adds, “all of it instilling in me the idea that literature mattered — both reading it and making it.”

For his part, Martin says he remembers encouraging Hawley, but mostly he tried to stay out of his way and let him create.

He did. In the creative writing section of the student newspaper, The Cardinal, Hawley practically filled it his senior year with his stories.

Hawley wound up attending Middlebury College in Vermont at Martin's urging. The school was known for its creative writing program and drew author Robert Frost to spend his summers there for more than 40 years.

Hawley would go on to do graduate work at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and ultimately earn a doctorate in political philosophy. He started his professional career teaching at a private boys school in Cleveland, becoming headmaster 1988 to 2005.

In effect, he mirrored the career of his mentor, Martin.

Throughout his career, Hawley never stopped writing. The books, yes, but also essays, articles and poems that appeared in literary, scholarly and commercial journals, including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, American Film, Commonweal, America, Orion, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Many of his nonfiction books have explored ways in which boys learn, including his 2014 book “I Can Learn from You: Boys as Relational Learners,” published by Harvard Education Press.

His latest book, about the fictional Jonathan Force, explores the lead character's boyhood connectedness to a spiritual place, taking him through adulthood and how his spiritual connection plays out through his life.

It begins with another intriguing first line: “I was born into Christmas.”

His writing style was not lost on his former teacher. The two went out to dinner afterward and laughed and reminisced about old times. Yet Hawley reflected later that it still matters to him, all these years later, what his mentor thinks of his work.

“The trajectory of my life,” Hawley said, “as a reader and writer is unthinkable without him.”