The first time the piece below ran, in 2010, Jean Rea '73 followed up with this note:
I believe I had Professor Ostrom for Freshman Writing when I was a first year student at Wittenberg in 1969-70. I had had excellent English teachers in my Enriched English classes at Wooster High School and had earned A's in all those courses. As a result, I was quite confident in my knowledge of grammar and expository writing when I arrived at Wittenberg. Professor Ostrom was very tough and I realized there was more to learn about writing. I learned some concepts which I still use today. I wish I could take another course from him today.
High praise.
John Ward Ostrom was born in June 1903. When he retired from Wittenberg sixty-eight years later, the event was momentous enough to elicit from The Sun (a local newspaper) both an article and a lead editorial. The editors (one of whom was Witt alum, and later Torch advisor, Alan Barth) called him “one of the foremost teachers in Wittenberg history ... one of the University’s foremost scholars and authors. “
A graduate of Gettysburg College, “Jack” Ostrom earned a Ph.D. in English at the University of Virginia, where he wrote a dissertation on the letters of Edgar Allen Poe. His teaching career took him to Gettysburg and The Citadel before he landed at Wittenberg in 1945. Three years later, Harvard University Press published his two- volume The Letters of Edgar Allen Poe, a landmark in Poe studies that established Ostrom as a leading Poe scholar.
Professor Ostrom was known to many others as an author of writing manuals. The Sun claimed that Ostrom’s The Craft Of Composition “conveys more information about the art, science, mechanics, and witchcraft of writing than any other manual we’ve seen.” His Better Paragraphs, which went through several editions--with a half million copies printed--was widely used in high schools. His books on writing were about more than syntax and grammar. As The Sun noted, “in teaching students how to organize paragraphs he has taught them, insofar as anyone could, how to think coherently. “And as he put it in Controlling Ideas: “For your training in composition, I should like to offer a slogan: Think – See – Select – Write.”
“A somewhat gaunt looking man with the face of a good-natured aesthetic, his faintly ironic manner and quizzical smile screen[ed] a broad range of competence.” At both the Citadel and Wittenberg he had a radio show – he had “an actor’s flair for eloquence and precision in the spoken word; an artist’s reverence for beauty and inspiration in the written word.“
Ostrom was a long-time chair of the English Department; Dean Erno Dahl applauded his “great contribution to the creation of a first-rate department of English.” A leader in the creation of the Wittenberg Honor Society in 1969, he held officers’ positions in the English Association of Ohio and the Ohio College English Association. He also served as state director of the National Council of Teachers of English.
When he died in 1993, twenty-two years after his retirement, The News-Sun wrote that “former students still talk about his abiding influence and of the enduring importance of what he taught them about writing.” The English Department honors his memory every year when they bestow the John W. Ostrom Awards for Writing.
Coincidentally, I acquired his academic cap and gown through his colleague, the late Dick Veler, another much-admired English professor. It is the heaviest academic cap I have ever encountered, with a metallic tassel that is downright dangerous.
*Sources: The Springfield Sun, 3-5-1971, 8D; the Springfield News-Sun, 12-19-1993 and 2-28-1971; and Controlling Ideas (1946).
About The Project
With Wittenberg now celebrating its 175th year, and the University unable to hold regular in-person classes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor of History Thomas T. Taylor has started circulating several pieces on Wittenberg's history. Some originated in earlier series, either This Month in Wittenberg History or Happy Birthday Wittenberg. Others have their origin in the Wittenberg History Project or in some other, miscellaneous project. Sincerest thanks to Professor Taylor for connecting alumni, faculty, staff, and students through a historic lens.