Remembering One Man’s Light: An ORU Professor Reflects on Dr. William Epperson

by Keith E. Gogan, Assistant Professor of English, Oral Roberts University

August 23, 2019

GC5C05 is the only room in the English and Modern Languages Department at ORU with a window. Fitting, then, that this room was his office: Dr. Bill Epperson’s. Dr. William R. Epperson passed away suddenly during finals week of the spring semester of 2019, leaving us, his beloved colleagues, grieving but also immeasurably grateful to have served alongside such a singular man.

Dr. Epperson’s professional accolades tell only a part of the story of his time here at ORU, but they’re worth the space. He served ORU for over 50 years as a professor, a chair of his department, and a scholar. He was selected as Outstanding Faculty Member not once or twice but three times, and was voted Outstanding Faculty of the College of Arts and Cultural Studies. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1989 and went to Korea for a year to teach English literature. I could go on.

Dr. Epperson’s professional accomplishments, though vast, don’t tell the whole story about him. Ask any of his former students about the man, and they will most likely respond with anecdotes about his adorable forgetfulness (especially with students’ names), his wry humor, or his thought-provoking discussions. Even beyond these, his less articulable qualities ran like a quiet stream. He had a placid, confident faith in, above all else, God’s love. He lived and breathed it. I myself experienced this when I was a student of his, not knowing I would become his colleague and friend for almost thirty years.

When I was an impressionable freshman English Education major at ORU in 1984, he welcomed me in his classes. Because of my test scores and some AP credits, I was allowed into these upper-level literature classes, but I felt I was in way over my head. I still remember just how much I didn't know, how utterly ignorant I felt in those classes, a young man from the woods of the Adirondack region of upstate New York; yet Dr. Epperson treated me with kindness and understanding. He must have seen something in me that I could not yet see.

As I worked through my remaining undergraduate years, his classroom comments, often asides or very subtle sprinklings of wisdom, helped me see that the Christian life is perhaps more than I had been taught previously, that there is a way of grace, peace, and understanding that outshines the way of scrupulosity and confusion. When I was profoundly troubled in my spiritual life, he was always willing to invite me to his office so I could talk through my problems. Later in my life, he became the reason I became a faculty member at ORU. He always believed in me, and sometimes I have to wonder why.

As his colleague, I (and everyone in the department) benefited from his gracious, wise leadership. I cannot possibly do justice to what I learned from this man—not only from his knowledge of literature and theology (I was convinced there existed no book he had not read or any theological idea he had not heard of), but also simply from what I observed in him. We became very close friends who shared unforgettable moments together: a hilarious backpacking trip during which he overloaded his backpack with some of the finer things in life, many a folk concert playing on into dusk, and my wedding, for which he was my best man. After my father, he was the most important male figure in my life. I miss him.

It didn't seem right to give Bill’s old office to someone else, so we in the English and Modern Languages Department have converted GC5C05 into a faculty lunch room, giving Bill’s surviving colleagues a new place to convene and break bread. To look out the window onto the east side of campus and remember him together. To welcome the light of the sun into an otherwise windowless part of the GC.

It’s entirely fitting that his former office is still marked by light. That’s what he was here to do—to bring light. He did just that. He still does.