It’s unlikely that the Mid-Shore, nor the town of Easton, will get over the premature death of that town’s council president John Ford last February any time soon.
The long-tenured senior staff member at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Ford played a remarkable role in Easton’s life as a municipality while also volunteering to support the community’s most vulnerable newcomers with his board leadership at the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center. However, perhaps John Ford’s most lasting legacy may be his commitment to lifelong learning on the Mid-Shore.
As one of the early leaders of the Academy for Lifelong Learning at CBMM, he knew the importance of lifetime learning well before it had come into fashion. He also helped transition that vital part of Talbot County’s quality of life into the newly formed Chesapeake Forum as its founding president in 2019.
And while he was a guiding force in preserving lifelong learning in the region, it might be that his role as instructor was the most transformational for both John and his students. Starting with his co-teaching Moby Dick many years ago with his then-colleague and noted academic, John Miller, he would offer dozens of literature courses in the years that followed.
To honor John’s life, John Miller and the Chesapeake Forum board made a personal appeal to historian David Blight, the acclaimed biographer of Frederick Douglass, to present a virtual keynote lecture in Ford’s memory on January 21. Professor Blight didn’t hesitate to agree.
The Spy talked to John Miller a few days ago about his friend John Ford, their years of teaching together, and why Professor David Blight was the perfect person to celebrate Ford’s countless contributions to the community he loved.
Blight, the Sterling Professor of History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, will deliver his lecture, “Frederick Douglass in His Times and In Ours,” on Thursday, January 21 at 4 pm. The presentation will also be available as a video recording to watch on demand.
You may register for David Blight’s presentation, as well as for 2021 winter/spring classes, at chesapeakeforum.org beginning Tuesday, January 5, 2021.
This video is approximately four minutes in length.
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