Mr. Schellenberger (Dick) was the best teacher I had in four years at Mercersburg. He taught the advanced senior English course, and was a stickler for precision and accuracy in writing and speaking. He treated his students with both discipline and humor. He was renowned for doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles in ink every week. And he convinced me to go to Princeton, for which encouragement I will be forever grateful.
I am sorry that I did not see the PAW notice of his passing at the time. I’m only 10 years late.
One anecdote, which might not be suitable for publication. In 1962, I happened to be assigned to his table in the dining hall. One of the other students was bemoaning the Dear John letter that he had just received from his girlfriend. Mr. Schellenberger advised that the student edit and grade her letter as he (the prof) always did to our scribbles, and send it back to her with lots of red pencil corrections to her grammar and vocabulary. And he suggested that the student end with the admonition, “I may dangle my participle, but I never split my infinitive.” You can perhaps imagine the hysterical laughter from our table in this dining room of an all-boys prep school. None of us dared explain it to any of the other teachers at surrounding tables, nor to the dean, who was nearby. I chuckled to myself for a week.
Thank you, Mr. Schellenberger. You left behind many well-educated students and quite a few Princeton Charlies.