CORRECTION APPENDED BELOW
I'll begin with a memory from my own house, some time in the early 1980s. My youngest daughter, Lauren, now 26, was a toddler, and I asked her, "Can you say 'Don,' Lauren? Say 'Don.' " She looked up at the Santa Claus-like figure in our family room and said something like "Bobo." "That's great," I said, giving her a little squeeze. "Good job, Lauren!"

What followed was a mini-lesson from Donald M. Murray on how to teach writing. It went something like this: "Too bad we don't teach children to write the way we teach them to talk or walk. When a baby tries to take her first step and then falls down, we treat it like a national holiday. We surround the baby with support. We don't say: 'No, no, no, before you can learn to walk, you need to develop the proper foot angle. Don't try that again, you little brat, before you've mastered the basics.'"

That's how I remember my time with Don Murray: It was always life, then craft, then back to life.

from the Boston Globe Don Murray as he appeared with his Boston Globe column

I met Don in 1980. I had been working at The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and what would become The Poynter Institute, as something then called a "writing consultant," an outside expert who entered the newsroom to encourage good writing. I had been hired by one of ASNE's titan editors, Gene Patterson, and Don had been hired by another, Jack Driscoll, to coach writers at The Boston Globe. (It was Don, I believe, who coined the word "coach" to describe this unusual role.)

I arrived at the Globe that year to interview Ellen Goodman, the 1980 winner of an ASNE Distinguished Writing Award. She introduced me to a man with a white beard and the body of an offensive lineman. Don Murray. I was 32 years old and knew nothing about him.

I didn't know that as a young man he had won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. I didn't know that he had a distinguished career as a reporter, including a stint at Time magazine. I didn't know that he was one of the original framers of an academic movement that revolutionized the way English composition was taught and written about. I didn't know he had papal status at great gatherings of writing teachers across the world.

RELATED RESOURCES

Read and sign the Legacy.com guestbook "Don Murray Dies: Writer and Teacher, Inspiration to Both," by Chip Scanlan "An Appreciation of Don Murray: The Things He Gave," By Chip Scanlan Read Don's last column, which he filed with The Boston Globe last Friday, here. See an archive of his work for the Globe here. Audio interview with Don Murray by Chip Scanlan for NewsU course Transcript of Interview Boston Globe column archive Inside the Writing Process with Don Murray "All writing is done on deadline: A conversation with Don Murray (features multiple links) Books Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work Crafting a Life in Essay, Story, Poem Shoptalk: Learning to Write with Writers Expecting the Unexpected: Teaching Myself—and Others—to Read and Write Learning by Teaching

I didn't know any of this because I thought I was Mr. Big Shot Writing Consultant, and because, during our conversation, he said nothing about his experience or status. All he did was ask me questions and treat me like an expert. Imagine running into Jesus on the road to Emmaus and not having the vision to recognize him. That's the way I came to think of Don Murray, and I've spent the last quarter-century trying to recover from my ignorance, trying to learn from the master, trying to pass along what I've learned to others, the way he passed his knowledge along to me.

I can boil that knowledge down into a series of statements about writing:

• That a piece of writing sometimes seems like magic, but that the process of writing involves a series of steps that can be learned.

• That writers learn by writing, by reading, and by talking about their craft.

• That teachers and editors best operate as resources for writers, by conferring with writers, not telling them what to do.

• That teachers should write with and for their students, in the classroom and the newsroom.

• That the best writers see the world as a storehouse of story ideas, and that news organizations need writers to open the world for readers in special and powerful ways.

• That no expert in any field should ever stop learning.

• That writers need encouragement, and that teachers and editors need to listen.

I invited Don to teach at one of the first writing seminars I ever conducted at Poynter, notable for the presence of Chip Scanlan, who would grow into one of Don's brightest acolytes and closest friends. Chip and I both remember some version of a little diagram Don handed to us, a simple model of the writing process that opened our minds and sharpened our vision.


What startled me most was the position of "Draft." Until then, I imagined that drafting was near the beginning of the writing process, not toward the end. Suddenly, I could see all the important steps that came first. As the intellectual contributions of Don Murray are chronicled over the years, we at Poynter will testify to how profoundly this deceptively simple construct has inspired our writing, our teaching and our reflections on the craft. For me, those reflections culminated in the publication of my book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer," which I dedicated to Don and to the memory of his beloved wife, Minnie Mae.

I wrote this in the acknowledgments: "Writers who care about the craft owe a debt to Donald M. Murray, perhaps the most influential writing teacher in the nation's history. Don's fingerprints appear on many of these tools. I thank him for teaching me how to think of writing as a process, how to listen to writers, and how to gather tools for my workbench."

It is April 9, 1982, and I decide to make a pilgrimage from Florida to New Hampshire to meet with Don Murray and his colleague Donald Graves. I have an idea for a first book. I've been a volunteer in the public schools and have learned something about teaching writing to children using the strategies of good journalism. But I don't know how to write a book, and I need their advice.

I stop first in Rhode Island to see my in-laws, who give me three chocolate bunnies to bring back to Florida for my daughters. As I drive a rental car toward New Hampshire, it begins to snow, and snow, and snow. I am dressed like a Floridian in jeans and a light jacket. As the snow mounts and the roads turn to ice, I have dark fantasies about being trapped in my car. They will find me in a snow bank, frozen to death, chocolate bunny stains on my lips.

I make it as far as Portsmouth, N.H., where my car and courage give out, and check into a Holiday Inn. Don comes to my rescue. He and Donald Graves bring me a wool cap and long scarf. They drive me to a fast food restaurant in a town called Newington. The storm has broken the windows of the restaurant, so we sit huddled at a central table, gulping down hot coffee and talking about writing. They hand over an ice scraper for my car and lots of encouragement for me. They ask me questions. The result will be my first book, "Free to Write: A Journalist Teaches Young Writers." In spite of the publisher's initial reluctance, Don encourages her to send the book out for review. Later, he will pen the foreword for a work that remains in print for almost 20 years.

So far, this tribute leaves out the deep personal connections that grow from a friendship of more than 20 years. I didn't see Don as a father figure. But my own father was not a talker, and Don was, and younger men need older men to talk with them. Don especially liked to talk while walking, which we did on his periodic holidays to Florida. I would rise at 6 a.m. and drive a few miles to his vacation condo, and we'd stroll for awhile around an artificial lake before heading for a beachfront eatery.

We'd talk about the craft, and wives and daughters, about the death of his daughter, Lee, from Reye's Syndrome, about the craft, about sex, about mothers, about Chip, about the Catholic Church, about the Scotch-Irish and Italians, about race, about football, about the craft, about World War II, about the failing health of Minnie Mae, about the weather in New Hampshire and in Florida, about that beautiful young jogger who just passed by, about the craft. Always about the craft.

I've come to believe in the give and take of personal legacies, that life is primarily about the inheritance of things from those who come before us, and about sorting out the good from the bad, and about passing along to the next generation our own version of the good. The take and the give.

Which is why I derive so much satisfaction from having been able to deliver into the hands of Don Murray and his daughters, copies of "Writing Tools." The dedication reads: "To Donald M. Murray and to the memory of Minnie Mae Murray, godparents to a nation of writers."

In blunt little e-mail messages, filled with gratitude, he'd say things like, "I'm not what you say I am, but thanks for saying it."

Yes you were, Don. Yes you were.

CORRECTION: The original version of this article incorrectly reported that Don Murray was hired at the Boston Globe by Tom Winship. In fact, he was hired by Jack Driscoll.