There is one professor who has had greater influence on my life and education than any other living, yet I have never taken a class from him. I have never even read any of his writing. We met once in a social context but we exchanged at the most a few sentences of friendly banter.

I was unable to read until I was nearly nine years old.

It was not for lack of effort on the part of my poor, patient mother. She knew I was capable. She knew I understood the concepts that we had been over together innumerable times in home school. Both my parents were readers and read to us often. I didn’t have any identifiable learning disabilities. I seemed to be relatively bright.

I simply refused to read. I didn’t want to do it.

My mother had read a few studies on the subject and some of the research indicated that it was relatively common for boys to not develop an interest in reading until the age of eight or nine. These studies suggested that pressuring them to read earlier than eight might cause more harm than good. So she hoped and tried not to worry.

At age eight we moved into a neighborhood where my mother felt more comfortable with the schools and I entered the public school system. The school bureaucracy was, of course, shocked and horrified at my inability to read. After consulting with my parents, they placed me in the second grade instead of the the third. When the rest of the class separated into reading groups, I was sent away from my classmates to attend the resource reading class. There were two other students in my class: a nice boy named Cameron, who I believe had a reading disability, and a sweet girl named Trisha who had Down’s Syndrome. I enjoyed my class and was blissfully unaware that I was in any way deficient or different from the other students. I learned fairly quickly.

In the third grade I became close friends with the son of a BYU professor. If there was one thing about this friend it was that he always was reading in class instead of paying attention to the teacher. He would sit with a book on his lap under the edge of his desk until he was caught by the teacher and made to put it away. He introduced me to all kinds of wonderful books: The Great Brain, The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, and best of all, The Chronicles of Narnia.

One afternoon, while under the influence of Mark Twain, my friend, my cousin, and I used my wood carving tools to cut our thumbs and press them together so that we could become “blood brothers” (we were too chicken to cut the palms of our hands). It was a magical time of life.

Then, one day something important happened. My friend was reading another book and I asked him what it was. “The Hobbit” he replied and then gave a lengthy explanantion of the book and how his father would read him The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for bedtime stories.

I checked out a copy of The Hobbit from the school library and the spell of J.R.R. Tolkien was cast. I was hooked and I have never escaped from the spells that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis cast upon me through my friend.

In the fourth grade I re-read the Hobbit and read the entire Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion. Just two years before I had been unable to read at all.

In the fifth grade our teacher decided to read us “The Hobbit” and my friend and I annoyed him no end with our comments, clarifications, and additional knowledge of the world of Tolkien.

After the sixth grade I returned to home-schooling and my friend and I drifted apart. By this time I had become interested in Tolkien’s languages and writing systems and I studied them relentlessly. My study of Tolkien’s languages soon lead me to check out books on Arabic and Hebrew. I became facinated with philology.

After only one year of home-school I started my freshman year at Timpview Highschool. My last experience with public school had been the sixth grade only a year earlier and you can imagine the contrast, but I did just fine. I often saw Tricia, the Down’s Syndrome girl with whom I had gone to resource reading class in second grade. I always said “hi” to her, but she didn’t remember me.

While I was introduced to many wonderful authors throughout high school, my friends Tolkien and Lewis were always there. In my senior year I wrote research papers for my A.P. English class on the theme of academic corruption in the works of C.S. Lewis represented by the Screwtape Letters, That Hideous Strength, and the Abolition of Man, and an expository piece on the role of pride in Tolkien’s Tale of Turin Turambar.

I started BYU as a Electrical and Computer Engineering Major and spent two years in that pursuit. I loved my physics and digital circuit design classes, but I could never shake the spells that had been cast upon me as a child. I found myself taking classes that had nothing to do with my major. I particularly enjoyed a class in Medieval Scandinavian Literature and Mythology and fell in love with the Poetic and Prose Eddas.

I changed my major to English. I loved my classes in Medieval Literature, Chaucer, Milton, and even though I was still an undergraduate found myself taking graduate courses in Old English and Beowulf in Old English. I presented papers on the relationship between the concept of “dragons” in the Scandinavian Saga of the Volsungs, the Celtic Mabigonion , and Beowulf. I took the senior course on C.S. Lewis and extended my research into how Lewis adapted the concept of dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

And then my education was interrupted by life. I’ll get back to it in the Lord’s due time.

So much of my life has been influenced by this one BYU Professor and his wife. It wasn’t his education, his brilliant insights, his mighty pedagogical skills. It was the effort and investment of time by him and his wife, within the walls of their own home, with their own family, that made the difference. They cultivated a love for literature in their children. They read difficult books to their son for bed time stories. And their love was delivered to me through their son. And they are likely completely unaware of the profound effect they have had.

The influence we have on those around us is a complex and often untraceable web of contact. What we do in our homes day by day reaches out with nearly invisible strings of power to move the world. And the power of the Gospel is more often distributed through these invisible channels.

This is a tribute to all those who have lived the gospel and cultivated greatness in the privacy of their own homes. But more specifically this is a tribute to brother John S. Tanner and his wife, sister Susan W. Tanner, current general president of the church’s Young Women organization.

Thank you both.

Please feel free to use the comments to offer thanks to those who have had indirect, but significant influence for good in your own lives.