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37 YEAR S
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A Quick Wit Tim Acker by
Daniel Lippman ’08 26
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ECADES OF HOTCHKISS Spanish students can thank the book One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez for giving the School Tim Acker, who retired this year after 37 years as an instructor in Spanish. Tim was a student at the University of Chicago when he read the 1967 classic that made him choose to major in Romance languages. “I just found the literature to be so creative. And so rich ... [It] was just something that really spoke to me in terms of the fantastic magic realism,” he said. “I found it to be the most exciting and alive literature that was being written at the time. And I think that anyone who read it couldn’t help being sort of caught up in it.” Tim grew up in Sheboygan, WI, where
his parents were also teachers. After graduating from Chicago in 1972, he went to Yale for what was going to be a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese, which turned into a master’s degree instead. Afterwards, he taught for two years at St. Paul’s School, then in the Hartford public school system, and after at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington. Then in 1978, he came to Hotchkiss.
From Sheboygan to Lakeville “I think I ended up staying longer than I thought I would,” he said. “But it always seemed like a good thing to stay. I think a person always wants to retire when you feel as if you’re still peaking and still really enthusiastic about what you’re doing.” He stayed so long because, in his words,
P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N N E D AY
M A CKE TI