TRIBUTE TO ROBERT WEBB

February 15, 2006
House of Representatives

Mr. Speaker, I would like to call your attention to the life and death of a great Tennessean.

Mr. Robert Webb accomplished more good for the people of Southeast Tennessee than many others of greater fame.
Robert Webb was born in Fort Sanders, Tennessee, in 1919. On December 22nd of 2005, he passed away at the age of 86 years. His life's work was spent nurturing Knoxville's educational needs.

Mr. Webb graduated from the renowned Bell Buckle, Tennessee, Webb School founded by his grandfather and former Senator, Robert ``Old Sawney'' Webb, before earning his bachelor's and master's degree from my alma mater, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Between degrees, he served our Country admirably in WWII.

After brief teaching stints at the Bell Buckle School and the Webb School of Claremont, California, Mr. Webb founded Knoxville's Webb School in 1955.

The school started with four boys in the basement of Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church. Shortly thereafter, Webb added a Girls' School.

The School stood at the forefront of educational equality when it declared an open-door policy in 1965. Mr. Webb followed this pronouncement with a then-controversial speech in favor of racial integration made to a convention of Southern private-school leaders.

Despite criticism, Mr. Webb persevered to make Knoxville's Webb School one of Tennessee's finest private educational institutions. It currently enrolls over 1,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and all members of its 2005 graduating class were accepted into college.

It is significant to note that Robert Webb chose the following motto for his school: ``Leaders, Not Men.'' This is a telling statement of how he approached service to the community and the Nation, with a willingness to blaze difficult trails so that others could follow.
Throughout his later years, Mr. Webb remained active in the community, leading the establishment of the Museum of East Tennessee History, and fundraising for the historic Bijou Theatre in Knoxville.

It is clear that his contributions to the legacy of private education in the South, and the cultural edification of Knoxville, will not soon be forgotten.

On behalf of the 2nd Congressional District of Tennessee, I express heartfelt condolences for the Webb Family, and great appreciation for the life work of Robert Webb.

I call to the attention of the readers of the Congressional Record an article written by Judge Bill Swann in the Knoxville News Sentinel that accompanies these remarks. [From the Knoxville News Sentinel]

ROBERT WEBB: GREAT TEACHERS LIVE ON
(By Bill Swann)
I remember the wonder with which Jerome Taylor and I grasped--it was September 1956, the first week in Mr. Webb's Latin class, my first week at Webb School--that you could actually say a thing some other way than English. It was a transforming moment.

There were a lot of those in my four years at Webb. Some of them were ``Aha'' moments, like that encounter with my first foreign language. Some of them were fill-the-backpack moments--times you knew you were loading up with information you would always need and use. Some of them were character moments--times when I was a good citizen or a poor citizen and learned the consequences. Coach Sharp had a lot to do with those.

I can still remember the wonder with which I realized that I had landed at a school where learning was an unquestioned good, where there was no such thing as ``geekiness,'' when I realized that all of us were there because we wanted to learn.

There were 16 of us in the class of 1960. I can name them all, fondly and with pride: Jim Hart, LeClair Greenblatt, Clark Smeltzer, ``E.R'' Boles, David Creekmore, Hugh Faust, Jim Bradley, Doug Newton, Chip Osborn, Sam Colville, Peter Krapf, Ed McCampbell. Sterling Shuttleworth, Kit Ewing. Jeff Goodson and me. Yes. ``me,'' direct object of the verb ``to name'' in the previous sentence. Thank you, Miss Freeman.

Fondly, because of the friendships, successes, embarrassments, mistakes, follies and secrets. With pride, because of our progress in four years to a Webb-shaped maturity. There were also moments of grace: Jeff Goodson teaching me to tie a bow tie; it took Jeff three days, but it stuck Sam Colville teaching me to drive straight shift, in his own creampuff '55 Chevy with three on the column. It took him all track season, driving from the new campus to Fulton High School. Coach Sharp had gotten us practice privileges at Fulton. The new campus on Cedar Bluff Road didn't have a track; it barely had a football field.

By now we have read the obituaries, the newspaper articles, the tributes. All the talk about Robert Webb in the community, Bob Webb the force for social good.

For me and for many of us, there is no Robert Webb, no Bob Webb. There is only the great and fine man we called and always will call ``Mr. Webb.'' He limped into our lives in the basement of Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church and changed each one of us forever.

So Mr. Webb is dead? I don't think so. ``But,'' they say--the people who believe Mr. Webb is dead--``there was the memorial service. The singing of hymns. There was the great obit by Jack Neely in Metropulse. There was the long obit in the News Sentinel He's dead, they say. Nope, Mr. Webb is not dead; never will be.

In my life and I hope in yours there is an unbroken line of great teachers. For me, the line is: Miss Freeman, who taught me seventh-grade English at Tyson Junior High School. Mr. Webb, who introduced me to Latin. in the ninth grade. Ted Bruning, my English teacher for the four years at Webb. RE. Sharp, the teacher of life skills at Webb. And John Sobieski, professor of civil procedure at the ``University of Tennessee law school.

The line is unbroken not because these great teachers are all still alive but because they are all still with me. They always will be. They live in my house. They are with me when I talk to my children, they are with me when I try to be my best, they are with me when I reach out to others. These five fine people required hard work and excellence in their own lives and expect the same of me.

I had some good teachers at Harvard and Yale. But I had my great teachers, my five great teachers, right here in Knoxville. I don't know what that means. Perhaps the best teaching is done by those who are not overly impressed with themselves, by those who know that you never stand so tall as when you reach down to help someone, by those who love learning and want you to share that love.

Henry Brooks Adams said. ``A teacher affects eternity. He never knows where his influence stops.'' Mr. Webb affected our eternities. He trained us to excellence. Mr. Webb wanted the best from each of us, there in the basement of the church. We delivered him our best because of his enthusiasm for learning. We delivered him our best because of his evident joy in the life of the mind. We delivered him our best because of his love of life itself.

He wanted us to be leaders. We became leaders because we wanted to be like him. He took mere human beings and produced leaders. You know the Latin in the coat of arms: You went to Webb.