Donald Williams Williams

Profile Updated: March 23, 2020
Class Year 1969
Residing In Toccoa, GA USA
Homepage www.donaldtwilliams.com
Occupation Professor (Emeritus, as of May 16)
Children Heather, born 1978
Tom, born 1981
Donald Williams

Now

Yes! Attending Reunion
Comments

Went on to college at Taylor University (BA 1973), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.Div. 1976) and the University of Georgia (PhD 1985--GO DAWGS!). Ordained a minister of the Gospel in the Evangelical Free Church of America. Served pastorates in Marietta and Toccoa. Have spent numerous summers training local pastors in Uganda, Kenya, and India. Currently serve as R. A. Forrest Scholar at Toccoa Falls College. Author of 12 books, most recently DEEPER MAGIC: THE THEOLOGY BEHIND THE WRITINGS OF C. S. LEWIS (Baltimore: Square Halo Books, 2016), AN ENCOURAGING THOUGHT: THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW IN THE WRITINGS OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN (Cambridge, OH: Christian Publishing House, 2018), THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN'S SURVIVAL GUIDE: COMMON QUESTIONS YOUNG CHRISTIANS ARE ASKED ABOUT GOD, THE BIBLE, AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH ANSWERED (Cambridge, OH: Christian Publishing House, 2019), and STARS THROUGH THE CLOUDS: THE COLLECTED POETRY OF DONALD T. WILLIAMS, 2nd ed. (Lantern Hollow Press, 2020).

School Story

I am very grateful for my LHS teachers and what they taught me, especially when I compare it to what my incoming college freshmen have *not* been taught today. Unexpected illustration: Mr. Kempe and the Lancer Band. We covered down, guided right, learned step-2 drills and squad drills, and put on a new halftime show for every home game. Today's high-school bands are hard to watch for sloppiness (may the glide-step sink into the sea!) and they spend the whole season perfecting one show, which deliberately avoids straight lines (where it's obvious if you mess up). Unfortunately, I see a similar decline in any subject you might care to name, especially English grammar. Go Lancers!

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Jan
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Jan 10, 2024 at 4:33 AM
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Aug 02, 2023 at 8:24 AM

Congratulations on completing another s[lendid lap around the sun! (And i don't even remember that you were on the track team.) Been great to see you on my Facebook posts. Go Lancers!

Jan 10, 2023 at 4:33 AM
Jan 10, 2022 at 4:33 AM
Jan 10, 2021 at 4:33 AM
Donald Williams Williams has left an In Memory comment for BERT KEMPE.
Sep 09, 2020 at 1:37 PM

Fifty-plus years later I am still playing (clarinet and bass clarinet). 

We could have marched the HS bands I see today into the ground.  When did covering down and guiding right go out of style?

I had an idea how lucky we were to have Mr. Kempe back in the late 1960s, but I have a much greater idea of it today.  I so wish I could have let him know before he passed.

BAND!  TenhHUT! TenHUT! 

TenHUt!  One, two, STOMP! 

Mar 23, 2020 at 10:34 AM
Mar 23, 2020 at 10:29 AM

As I begin the second half of the semester with the students *not* returning to Toccoa Falls College today and my attempts to teach them through unfamiliar media beginning, my thoughts naturally turn to Shakespeare:

"Oh brave new world, that has no people in it!" (Sorry, Miranda, had to adjust your exclamation a wee bit to fit the times.)

"Our revels now are ended. These our students
Were, as I foretold you, all spirits,
And are vanished into air, into thin air.
And like the baseless fabric of this vision
The ivory-covered towers, the confining dormitories,
The solemn chapels, yea, the great campus itself
And all that it inherit shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

(Not necessarily predicting the end of the on-campus residential academic world--May God grant it be back in the fall--but as this is my last semester before retirement, that is what it feels like!)

And as for my actual physical classroom:

"This fell sergeant virus is strict in his arrest . . . The rest is silence."

Donald Williams Williams posted a message. New comment added.
Jan 24, 2020 at 3:40 PM

Posted on: Jan 23, 2020 at 10:56 AM

The David Cochran I knew was class of 69. Are you the same, with a typo in the year, or someone different?

Jan 10, 2020 at 4:36 AM