Folks, I rarely want to pat myself on the back, but I recently received a letter from Reid Mirre, a former HST 344 student, and it was so encouraging to me as I start a new writing project. So what follows is from Reid and is as much a compliment related to him than of me. He was an exceptional young man, and an example of the best from the University of Dayton.
Hello Dr. Heitmann,
I've been meaning to write you for a while now, but with the post college job hunt and then actually starting the job, its been a busy time for me. I took a job with one of the few growing and expanding companies within Dayton, Lastar, which is literally in the backyard of the Moraine plant and down the road from the now departing NCR, which kind of puts my job in perspective. They manufacture and sell computer cables, HDMI cables, and other sorts of computer/tv/audio equipment. I am coordinating their online advertising and marketing, which is nice as it is a position that combines the creativity of writing promotional material with analytical research; plus it is very close to UD which is great for when I want to go back to school.
Anyway, I didn’t know if you knew of this or not, but 20/20 this Friday will be covering the future of General Motors and I imagine other issues pertaining to the industry. That is what sparked me to write to you but more specifically I wanted to thank you for the great experience that your history class was. That was my last semester and it truly was a joy to end my M/W/F mornings with that class. Rarely are classes both fun and challenging. Not that other challenging classes are not enjoyable at UD, many are, but fun is a word that I would not give out to many of them. The discussion, the infusion of media, your sense of humor… it was simply a great experience. Your textbook was a definite contributing factor to that, as it took a subject matter that could be very dry or drawn out and made it clear, concise, humorous and made an effort to look at the whole picture of the automobile’s influence on America. The passion you had for the subject matter was contagious, I know I took great pride in my term paper and what I discovered about the automobile and early market research pioneering.
Your class even reintroduced me to the concept of reading for enjoyment, for leisure. UD obviously is not short of bright young minds but I think many, like myself, fall out of the habit of reading for fun because so much of our time is consumed by readings for our classes that feel more like work than anything else. The books you had us read are exactly the kind of books that I enjoy reading, I used to be quite the bookworm, so it didn’t feel much like work. Since then I’ve read probably 20 or so books, notably I read Lee Iacocca’s biography and currently I am reading my second novel by Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums.
UD is lucky to have you as a professor and hopefully I’ll run into you again whether its when I return to earn my MBA or just at a Flyers game.
Have a great summer and best regards,
Reid
