Randolph W. Covington, Adjunct Instructor of English, received his BA and MAT degrees in English from the University of Virginia where he played football and rugby, was a member of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, and resided on the Lawn in his fourth year. Although he enjoyed studying every period from the classics to contemporary literature, his graduate focus was on the fiction of the American South in the interval between the Civil War and World War I.
For over three decades Mr. Covington taught secondary school English. His creative writing classes twice were awarded the annual trophy in the competition for the best writing in the state. The debate team which he sponsored won ten state championships and competed frequently at national tournaments. In the evenings during that same time, he taught freshman composition classes for twenty-four years at Blue Ridge Community College and for four years at JMU.
He has an interest in drama and has appeared locally at Oak Grove Theater, Mary Baldwin College and with the Waynesboro Players. His favorite roles have been Gloucester in King Lear and Falstaff in Henry IV part 2.
He and his wife live near Verona on a farm which has been in the family for more than four generations. They raise beef cattle, Dorset sheep and maintain a riparian buffer on almost two miles of Middle River to help improve the downstream water quality.
His writing interests include personal essays, short stories and poetry which appear occasionally in "little" journals.
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. ~Henry David Thoreau |
|
