When I first joined the San Antonio Calligraphers’ Guild way back when, I saw a flyer on the bulletin board that described Reggie’s year long class.  And my thought was, “I hope maybe he’ll come close enough to our city one day and I’ll be able to take the class.”  So I was thrilled just a year later when Joan Schmitz came to a board meeting and said, “I think our guild is ready for Reggie’s year long class.”  I was ecstatic, as were many others, and we did make it happen in 2001.  Many of us still claim that was the making of us as calligraphers (though Reggie may not want to take responsibility for us!).  

And then our guild was fortunate enough to gain many more new members, so we had Reggie come back and do it again, in 2013.  In between, we were thrilled to do the year of Primitive to Modern in 2008, and repeated that in 2016.  After so many year long classes, we all hear Reggie in our heads when we sit down to letter - “if you don’t have time to do it right, you’ll definitely have time to do it wrong” or “my way isn’t the only way, but I know it works” or “squeeze out a ‘wormlet’ of gouache onto your palette” and on and on.  

Our dear friend Gwen Weaver said she always felt that Reggie was sitting on her shoulder like Jiminy Cricket, saying not that way, this way.  And she would argue with him, only to decide in the end that he was right after all.  And our favorite of all, in answer to whatever question was about to take us off track, was “you’re not old enough yet.”  So in 2016, at the end of our year, Rosie Gonzales found this C.S. Lewis quote, and I was honored to be asked to write it out for our class t-shirt.  It’s a permanent reminder for us that no matter how old we are, we’re never too old to look at life with the fresh eyes of a child and to enjoy the learning process as Reggie taught us to do.