Dr. Robert Spinney, PHC's beloved Professor of History, will retire after more than 20 years of service to the College. Dr. Spinney has shaped countless lives through his teaching, mentorship, and friendship. Students often cite his challenging courses, such as U.S. History, Historiography, U.S. Intellectual History, and History of Women, as having a lasting influence on their thinking.
Chase Hope, author:
Last week, I sat in Dr. Robert Spinney's office and asked him what he would miss the most in his retirement, which will begin soon. Referring to our conversation, he said, "I'll miss this. I'll miss talking to my friends—we spend so much time together in class, right? I count you guys as my peers, really."
It's safe to say we'll miss Dr. Spinney, too.
One afternoon at Patrick Henry College, on the final day of spring classes, students gathered outside of Spinney’s last class to surprise him with a farewell card filled with signatures and notes of gratitude.
Before every class, Spinney purses his lips, scrunches his face, closes his eyes, and silently prays.
What does he pray for? Not that his students will all love history. "I pray that my students will be good thinkers," he said. "Because I really believe good thinkers end up being good Christians."
Spinney began teaching online history classes at PHC in 2004, becoming a full-time faculty member in the fall of 2007. After 20-odd years of challenging underclassmen and shaping lives at PHC, he will leave behind a campus grateful for all he has done.
Spinney was pastoring a small church in Tennessee when he took the Distance Learning job. He believed that he would better serve God by teaching at PHC than by preaching. He enjoys asking people abstract questions about how to apply a Christian worldview to a situation or about what decision they would make in a scenario. Spinney does not simply lecture about the actions of past U.S. presidents like Herbert Hoover during crises like the Great Depression—he picks a student and asks what he would have done in Hoover's place.
"It's much more difficult to do that in a local church, though, regrettably, than at a college," Spinney said. "In a local church, you've got families, and they've got kids, and they're worried about the depressing issues of day-to-day life."
Teaching college classes allowed him to have the conversations he believed he was supposed to have.
Spinney's classes have a fearsome reputation—"Spinney papers" and "Spinney tests" are not meant to be easy. Years ago, when U.S. History I and II were freshman classes, a group of sophomores arrived for orientation week wearing T-shirts saying, "I Survived Spinney."
Seniors Ryan Slemmer and Alex Rubstein have both taken Historiography and U.S. Intellectual History, two of Spinney's upper-level classes. They sat together so often that Spinney took to calling them "Slem-Rub." For them, the lessons of Historiography—their favorite class of Spinney's—extended far beyond learning how to write history.
"Dr. Spinney taught us how to think," Rubstein said simply, "and how to be a Christian in a world that’s not."
Professor of History and Chairman of the Classical Liberal Arts Department, Dr. Douglas Favelo, came to campus three years after Spinney did. During Favelo’s first fall at PHC, he sat in on Spinney’s Historiography class.
"It became really apparent early on that I had so much to learn from this man," Favelo said. Having spent his time in secular schools, Favelo had not seen history taught with a robust, intentional Christian framework.
Spinney's impact on people is not limited to academic settings. For decades, he has dealt with depression. He has made progress, but still takes medication to mitigate its effects. Instead of keeping this a secret, he goes out of his way to help people who might have a similar struggle. Once, he gave a chapel message on how to combat depression.
Senior Amelia Ruiz considers Spinney her favorite professor, with her favorite class being his History of Women course. Last spring, when Ruiz was battling some depression of her own, she decided to visit Spinney and ask for his help.
"In that conversation, he showed me how he has worked through some of his mental health struggles," Ruiz said, "and how he has managed to obey the Lord daily despite how he feels." She has been back to his office multiple times since then.
Spinney is remarkably humble. He does not spend time pondering why students enjoy his classes or how he wants to be remembered here, even though he knows that U.S. History courses are often referred to by his last name. "I guess," he said, "I would be gratified if I found out that people remembered me as kind and fair, and at least on some level, useful."
The decision to retire, Spinney said, was forced on him by fatigue. Throughout his life, he has been reliant on God’s providence to nudge him into important life decisions. "I'm not confident enough," he said. "God intervenes and makes my current situation where I can't keep doing this. This just isn't working."
Spinney describes himself as an introvert who dislikes public speaking, but his energetic teaching style requires him to become what he calls a "temporary Tigger," a reference to the outgoing Winnie-the-Pooh character. The older he has become, the harder his teaching style has been to sustain. "I'm just running out of gas," he said.
Now, his famous gun collection is packed up for transport. He plans to move back to Tennessee and be close to two of his adult children who live in the area. "The time I'm investing here in my students," he said, "I would like to invest in my family." He also wants to be more available for his elderly mother.
Dr. Les Sillars, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, said that Spinney has been a model for the entire faculty. "He has this remarkable ability to make students cry and love him for it," Sillars said, adding that Spinney taught him so much about dedication and effective teaching. "He's been such a huge part of this college and students' experience here. We'll miss him dearly, but we're also really glad for him that he'll be able to be closer to family and get some rest. He's earned it."
No one could do that. "This is the temptation anytime you're trying to replace someone who's so influential and performs at such a high level," Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Mark Mitchell said. "To say we're looking for a clone of Dr. Spinney would mean that we're just going to be disappointed."
As Favelo put it, "I've said to my colleagues, 'If it's Spinney or bust, then all of us need to be fired.'"
Spinney has been a mentor to Favelo: "He has taught me so much about what it’s like to be a dad and a husband and a teacher at PHC," Favelo said.
He added that while all the professors here intentionally try to serve the Lord Jesus with their work, "Spinney lives that out every day, and he teaches that. That's what we're losing—because he does that better than anybody else here, I think."
---
This article originally appeared in PHC's student-run publication, The Herald.
Patrick Henry College exists to glorify God by challenging the status quo in higher education, lifting high both faith and reason within a rigorous academic environment; thereby preserving for posterity the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is the foundation of America.