Students give teacher special lesson

By Darrell Laurant

Published: September 30, 2008

ALTAVISTA — Generally, it is the teacher who tries to convince the student to get his or her work published. In Alma Rountrey’s case, however, the roles were reversed.

“We talked her into doing a book of her poetry,” said Lynn Hanson, who learned English and Latin from Rountrey at Altavista High School, “partly because we’re still grateful to her for being such a great teacher, and partly because it’s such good poetry.”

if you’re going
WHAT: The Sorghum Festival
WHEN: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 4; noon to 5 p.m. Oct. 5
WHERE: Clifford Ruritan Hall, 755 Fletchers Level Road, Amherst
INFO: live music, Brunswick stew, syrup making, craft vendors and the Virginia Jousting Tournament.  Call (434) 946-2208 or e-mail

“We” were former Rountrey students Hanson, Connie Lane, James Stanfield, Frank Andrew, Barbara Stanfield Whittington and Charles “Spike” Andrew.

The catch was, Rountrey, now 94, never liked to think of what she prefers to call her “verse” in crass commercial terms. It was always a gift, either to someone else or herself.

“I’ve been writing verse since I was a little girl,” she said.

“That was back during the Depression, and my brother and I used to give what we wrote to our parents as presents, because we couldn’t afford anything else. Sometimes, I just did it to amuse myself.”

The solution? She will be making her book, “Hunting Quarter and Other Poems,” available at this weekend’s annual Sorghum Festival in Clifford (where she was raised), and all $10 of every sale will go to a scholarship fund organized by the Clifford Ruritan Club.

“I like that arrangement,” she said, “although it always makes me a little nervous to appear in public like that.”

Rountrey is one of those rare and fortunate people who has flourished into her 90s.

“The amazing thing to me,” said Hanson, now a teacher in Nelson County, “is that this isn’t a book of old poems she found in a drawer somewhere, covered with dust. She wrote most of these in the last 10 years.”

Some are colored by haunting memories (“Hunting Quarter” is the name of her grandparents’ house in Clifford); others are spiced with her still considerable wit. Like the ending of this one, called “Creation.”

“You know what I like best?/ You breathed into Adam your own breath./ And he became a living soul./ All breath is of you/ from you/ How must you have felt/ to see Adam come alive!/ Your creation!
“I’m sorry he didn’t behave better.”

Then there is her method for dealing with students whom she taught more than half a century earlier and who now expect her to recognize them immediately.

“I’ve developed a method in such cases,” Rountrey said.

“I say, ‘I remember exactly where you sat.’ It fools them.”