The man and his legacy

One may assume that for an English professor with 45 years of teaching, writing, and researching experience, the story ends with retirement. However, if that professor happens to be Dr. Neil Graves, that assumption could not be more wrong.

Graves has a 15 page resume filled with years of academic and scholarly achievements, but he tells a very humble and honest story regarding his accomplishment as a professor, writer and scholar. He speaks thoughtfully of his 45 years at UTM, and on the subject of his upcoming retirement, he says that his job is not one he wants to give up. Rather than calling it quits for good, Graves plans to continue in “half-time post-retirement” for a few years, and this decision reflects how much he enjoys his job.

From a graduating class of only 26 students to detecting a complex pattern of hidden messages in Shakespeare’s sonnets, Graves has a simple story to tell and a much more detailed career of teaching, researching and advocating beneath the surface.

“His expertise as an English grammarian has wide-spread recognition in the educational world. He has invested his life in helping students with their writing and in representing faculty in the shared-governance environment of higher education,” said Jenna Wright, chair of the English and Modern Foreign Language Department.

Whether writing poetry, uncovering Shakespeare’s secrets in the Runes, or painting watercolors of Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Graves’ story is rooted right here in the heart of UTM.

Born Feb. 2, 1939, Roy Neil Graves began his life in Medina. He grew up tossing newspapers, taking piano lessons, and working on farms, but these simple childhood experiences were only the beginning of his story. After graduating from Medina High School in 1957, he was admitted to Princeton University but chose instead to begin his academic career at Union University. After reapplying to Princeton, he was once again accepted in 1961 and later graduated with honors. The next stop in his academic journey was Duke University, where he received a Masters of Arts in 1964.

One year later, he married Sue Lain Hunt, a teacher and pianist from Union University. They had three children together, Anna, Ben and Molly. They later divorced and shared joint custody of the children.

Anna Hunt Graves, the oldest of the three, is a graduate of Yale and of Simmons in Boston. She is an author and librarian. Their son, Benjamin Lain Graves, graduated with an M.A. from Washington State and is a professional musician with performance experience in the Grand Ole Opry. The youngest of the three, Molly Brett Graves, graduated from Princeton University. She is a teacher and a fabric aerialist.

In 1977, Graves received his D.A. in English from the University of Mississippi. With three degrees under his belt, he began building his resume, the bulk of which consists all of his own published works. He has participated in literary societies, won contests and received teaching awards. He has both written and peer-reviewed for The Explicator, a literary journal that publishes short papers on poetry and prose to which he continues to contribute. His own poetry has been published in university journals, poetry reviews and other poetical collections. His name has been included in several different Who’s Who encyclopedias for writers and poets throughout the majority of his career.

A unique aspect of Graves’s experience as a researcher is his work with Shakespeare’s Runes. When studying the famous sonnets of William Shakespeare, Graves picked up on a different way to view them; rather than reading each sonnet on its own, he took the first line of each sonnet for every 14 sonnets and created alternate sonnets with those lines. He continued the pattern with the second lines, the third lines and so on, which creates a completely different piece of poetry for every set of sonnets.

The main message he took from this pattern and from the new sonnets is that Shakespeare’s works may have had much more playful intentions than serious ones. Graves refers to his discovery as finding the “game” or “playful” element of Shakespeare’s poetry, rather than insisting that each poem was intended to be solemn and portentous. He has written many pieces on this subject and he also seems confident in the fact that these playful elements exist.

He has also created a website called “Shakespeare’s Lost Sonnets” which shows all of his evidence, but time will tell whether the findings are accepted by scholars around the world. Graves points out that all the lost sonnets can all be paraphrased, which shows that Shakespeare’s method of grouping them was not accidental. However, despite his confidence in the findings and his love for Shakespeare’s works, he has decided to let the evidence speak for itself, instead of fighting to convince the English community of its truth.

Graves has had a positive influence on his co-workers during his time at UTM. Anna Clark, co-coordinator of the Hortense Parish Writing Center at UTM, speaks fondly of him as a friend, colleague and scholar, who she has known since she started working at the university in 1981.

“He is a creative writer and serious scholar whose research has shone light in some previously unexplored areas,” said Clark. “Throughout the last 20 years, our offices have been adjacent, so we have shared much as we have taught our classes, worked on various committees and the Faculty Senate and moved forward in creative writing. I admire Neil’s passion for writing and research.”

Graves’s achievements throughout his career shed much light on that passion for digging into great literature and contributing to the world of writing.

Humbly, and jokingly, Graves claims that he isn’t much of a specialist in anything but rather a “generalist.” However, in light of his accomplishments in the academic and educational world, his story is anything but general. He has published countless articles, essays, and other types of writing; he has taught numerous classes and served in many academic positions; he has run marathons, restored log cabins and cultivated his own garden. Graves has not just been a Senior Professor, a writer or a scholar in literature. He has demonstrated his keen eye by looking into the playful undertones of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets.

Graves has been both a teacher of English, cultivating the minds of UTM students who sometimes forget to put their quotation marks outside of their punctuation, and a teacher of life, offering a humble yet inspiring story. He leaves a legacy that will live beyond his 45 years teaching at UTM.

Go to the photo gallery “Neil Graves: The man and his legacy” to view more photos of Dr. Neil Graves.

Featured Photo: Dr. Neil Graves in December 2013. (Neil Graves)