“In order to be successful your story must move … The last thing you want is a sense of inertia.”

— Lee Hadley, Anabelle Irwin and Jeanette Eyerly, in Writing Young Adult Novels.

Lee Hadley, a creative writing professor in Iowa State’s English department, knew the importance of timing, in life as well as in print. A few years ago she found out she had cancer, but she didn’t tell Dale Ross, the department chair, until this past summer.

I didn’t learn the news until fall. Early in the semester I stepped into the English office and heard one secretary say something softly to another— something about a professor’s death.

“Who died?” I asked.

“Lee Hadley. Did you know her?”

I felt stunned. Lee had been my first ISU professor; she’d let me audit her class when I was trying to get into grad school — after professors in my area turned me away.

In the days following Lee’s death, the back-to-school banter in Ross Hall quieted as English students, faculty and staff exchanged stories about Lee and our connections to her. The rest of campus enjoyed new beginnings, but we dealt with endings. Lee Hadley had made an impact. Again.

“The only reason to write is to make money,” Lee would announce at the beginning of her magazine writing class. One of Lee’s former students reminded me of this pronouncement, and of how it got our attention. But what did it mean?

Writing young adult novels in collaboration with Anabelle Irwin, Hadley dealt with troubling, real issues like racism, teenage suicide and, in the groundbreaking Abby, My Love, incest. Clearly, not only money but social, artistic and humanistic concerns motivated her.

“Any of you can be published if you want to be published badly enough,” Lee was also fond of saying. She challenged our entrenched notions about writing, she inspired us.

Fern Kupfer was one of those Lee inspired. Now an established author and associate professor of English at ISU, Fern received her first magazine contract while taking Lee’s course. After the course was over, Lee provided Fern with office space and acted as her mentor. Later she would support Fern as a colleague and friend.

Recalling Lee’s generosity, Fern said, “When I published a new book and we’d go out to dinner to celebrate, Lee would pick up the tab. And when she published a book, she’d also pick up the tab!”

So Lee Hadley was not an author who placed money first, but a caring colleague and teacher who employed gimmicky comments as a means to an end. Ultimately, I believe, “The only reason to write is to make money” meant “Value what you write, and thus value yourself — and don’t let anyone underpay or undermine you.”

Tell your stories; don’t be silenced. And don’t be starved into silence, either. Lee knew the struggle for a voice. She had to carve out a literary place for herself and the young adult novels of the Hadley- Irwin team. Young adult fiction has been called the snotty-nosed kid sister of its adult counterpart; it would never give Lee Hadley the name recognition that some adult fiction authors enjoy.

But Lee knew that her work was just as important as theirs — maybe more important. She wrote for readers who are still growing, readers who seek in stories a way to make sense of the contradictions which surround them, jar them, and often shut them down. Parents — when they don’t lie at the root of teenagers’ problems — can only help so much. Peers offer naive, simplistic solutions; TV and movies banal formulas. In this vacuum, a good book can be so much more than an escape.

Writing holds power. Lee knew this, and she taught it. She assigned my class the task of writing Iowa View essays — guest editorials for the Des Moines Register. I sent mine in, and it was published. I wrote about coming back to the Midwest from California, and coming back a vegetarian. Hadley was proud of me and how I’d appealed to a largely unsympathetic audience.

“The rest of you can do this too!” she told the class.

That same semester, I was accepted into the graduate program in teaching English as a second language.

“Good,” Lee said. “You’ll get a job. But keep up your writing.”

Though I lacked faith in my writing ability, she didn’t. Ironically, this woman who encouraged so many of us to value our stories and selves requested no funeral and no fanfare over her passing. We had a memorial service anyway.

Maybe she liked the idea of our having to override her dying request. Maybe she knew that, as a result, whatever we did to remember her would be something we did for ourselves as well as for her, something heartfelt, not obligatory.

She also must have known her death would be more dramatic since it was unexpected. But I wish she’d let us know she was ill. I wish I’d had the chance to tell Lee she meant something to me, that she helped me keep alive the dream of being a writer even though I haven’t pursued writing as a career. I want her to know she gave me the tools so that what I have is not a pipe dream, but a dream deferred.

Her death reminds me not to defer my dreams too long. But my reaction to it does something else. It surprises me in its intensity, affirming the value of what Lee did, and what I do: teach students English, encourage them to find and exercise their voices.

At the memorial service, someone said that Lee was first and foremost an author. The loss I feel, however, is not over Lee Hadley, the author. I have yet to cry at the death of one of my favorite authors.

I grieve the loss of my teacher, and all that I still might have learned from her.

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Roberta Golliher is a graduate student in English.