The first professor I loved was Stan Benfell. In the Fall of 2002 I arrived at BYU in the fall of 2002 as an idealistic freshman eager to explore all the biggest questions of life. I enrolled in Professor Benfell’s Comparative Literature 201 class and it was everything I dreamed university life could be. We read the Iliad, Oedipus Rex, the Aeneid, Beowulf, and more, ending with Professor Benfell’s beloved Divine Comedy. As a teacher he was brilliant, funny, and passionate and always carried himself with great dignity and humility. Each week he would select 2-3 student essays as examples of excellence. The day he chose mine filled me with joy. Through his class my intellect sharpened, my imagination expanded, and my soul deepened. Because of him I decided to become a humanities major and over four beautiful years was shaped and nourished by many of Stan’s colleagues and mentees: Matt Ancell, George Handley, Michael Call, Carl Sederholm, and Kerry Soper.
Over the years, I stayed in touch with Stan and would always try to see him when I visited Provo. He became not just a mentor, but a friend I could joke and commiserate with over chips and salsa. When we launched Wayfare, he was one of our biggest supporters and wrote a beautiful essay for our 3rd issue entitled “Anxiously Engaged.” Here’s a passage from the final paragraph:
“I have thought a lot about the verse in Ether 12:27, where the Lord tells Moroni that he will make our weakness become strong if we exercise faith. The Lord has indeed at times made my weakness of anxiety strong, but that has not meant—even in those moments—that I am no longer anxious. As the Spirit told me on that fall day in the Kyoto Peace Garden in Holland Park, I am not going to be relieved of this “thorn in the flesh.” But it can become strong, I have realized, when I refuse to use my anxiety as an excuse and instead exercise some faith that the Lord can use my anxiety in productive ways. I have learned that the Lord is intimately aware of my struggles, even if he does not relieve me of them, just as he is aware of my hopes and triumphs. And this is a lesson that we should all learn. The Lord in fact needs me as his disciple—precisely because of my anxiety or other weaknesses as well as my strengths—just as he needs all of us.”
In many ways, my entire life and career since has been inspired by what I learned and experienced from Stan and the BYU humanities department. Stan lit a flame in my heart that still burns. I look forward to reuniting with him and reading and discussing art and literature in the eternities.
He once shared with our class that when he was a student at NYU, a Professor said something like, "If only all those Mormon kids were intelligent like you!" Professor Benfell said his reaction was to say, "You just need to meet more Mormons." That story has stayed with me because of the generosity of spirit he showed; it would have been tempting to let the compliment go to his head