I’d had friends before who wrote in notebooks or were voracious readers, who could quote lines of poetry, but none of them possessed Derek’s level of belief in each of those activities. I saw him as a great elder (only a year older than me) – a borderline messenger – who could show me all that could be found or accomplished in words.

He sat by his bookshelf the first night I really got to know him and explained to a small group the wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut and his ideas for creating a real sense of community among humankind. One concept involved assigning individuals numbers for last names, so, on occasion, if you came across another person who as a 6779, you’d have an immediate connection. No one had ever laid something that sensible on me before and I left his place that night with a borrowed copy of Slaughter House Five that opened my eyes further to Vonnegut’s insights and his wry humor.

During my sophomore year in college, Derek was the opinion page editor for the campus newspaper. He penned his own columns that were closer to literature than journalism. By the time I’d been introduced to him, he’d earned a following among the student body and a hatred among some administrators – actually, it was the college’s heavy-handed president in particular – for questioning the school’s direction. The other college directors actually saw him as a champion of all the things they wanted to say, but feared retribution in doing so.

In the mid-1990s, Park College (now Park University) was becoming more business focused and less acadameia driven. Many traditional colleges and universities are now following a similar model as they try to catch up to for-profit institutions that have shown that an innovative business-minded approach to education can be healthier than a strong-willed commitment to faltering student recruitment methods.

But 10 years ago, it was an oddity to see on-campus life de-emphasized, 100 year-old trees cut down to accomodate the college’s power infrastructure, and employees who had worked at the institution for 20 years or more fired to create a healthier bottom line.

These were the issues that president Don Brecken was called out on in our newspaper, and Derek did it in such a mature way. I flip through old editions of The Stylus newspapers about once a year and it’s remarkable at the dialogue on those pages. At 20 or 21, Derek was explaining his arguments sometimes in eloquent letters that addressed Brecken directly, and other times in allegories and metaphors, including one piece about rat burgers, that criticized in a playful, more relatable fashion.

Derek graduated a year or so before I did and I helped him move his bookshelf and some other items into a small house across the city. He was moving in with another writer and columnist on The Stylus, Pat McSparin, who was the quintessential eccentric writer, who would turn in articles for publication without periods or paragraph breaks. Pat once wrote a highly visual diatribe about a girl he had a relationship with in high school but it never worked out because of some reason that was self-depricating.

They invited me over to eat some burritos and sip a few beers on the craggy back porch of their ranch house, and it was then that I realized I’d stumbled onto a real writing community. There were parties in that house, jammed wall to wall with other writers and creative people. Derek had gotten me drunk for the first time – at his first apartment – and it would happen again in this bungalow on a shady suburban, black-tar street with its own string of broken mailboxes and a library hidden away. Those secret books, it seemed, could turn anyone into a talented – but more importantly, brave – writer completely bought in on the power of words.

Too many editors are mere wordsmiths or style-conscious followers. Pete Dulin has a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the written word. He’s more concerned with story, rhythm and being sensitive to his writers’ abilities to tell what happened in their own voice. He’s encouraging at the same time as curious to help them discover their talents. I’ve personally benefited by working with him, but I’ve also enjoyed the experience.