|
|
|
The R. Joel Senter Sr. Memorial Prize was founded by Joel’s wife, Carolyn. Carolyn wanted the legacy of her husband to live on in the Sherlockian world after his death.
R(oderick) Joel Senter, Sr. (1930 - 2018) was a man of many interests and correspondingly numerous accomplishments. He played in bands, he performed magic, he taught mnemonics to Air Force personnel, he hosted a Dixieland jazz radio show, he wrote and produced Old Time Radio re-enactments (one of which won an award), and – probably best known – he and his wife, Carolyn, operated the premier Sherlock Holmes mail order catalogue for almost three decades. |
|
Joel was a professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati for 32 years. For about 10 of those years, he taught enormous-sized classes – from 300 to 800 students. Decades later, those students still remember his clear teaching and his dry wit. Joel also established and headed an Experimental Psychology Laboratory at the university and received numerous grants from government agencies. But he may have been even better known in the field of statistics.
A textbook he wrote, Analysis of Data, is something of a classic on the subject. One student, who himself later became a professor, recalled that he hated and feared math until he studied with Joel. “Astonishingly,” he reported, “because of his way of teaching, I loved statistics.”
Throughout all those years of professional achievement, Joel retained a passion for a certain consulting detective that he met in a high school English literature class via “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League.” So, after he accepted an early retirement package from the University in 1988, Joel and Carolyn embarked on the great adventure of the rest of their life together. It involved the founding of Classic Specialties and eventually the Sherlockian E-Times newsletter. Classic Specialties was the Amazon.com of the Sherlockian world before there was Amazon – a place where one could buy all manner of Holmes-related books and other products. Many of those products were unique, the creation of Joel’s fertile imagination.
A textbook he wrote, Analysis of Data, is something of a classic on the subject. One student, who himself later became a professor, recalled that he hated and feared math until he studied with Joel. “Astonishingly,” he reported, “because of his way of teaching, I loved statistics.”
Throughout all those years of professional achievement, Joel retained a passion for a certain consulting detective that he met in a high school English literature class via “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League.” So, after he accepted an early retirement package from the University in 1988, Joel and Carolyn embarked on the great adventure of the rest of their life together. It involved the founding of Classic Specialties and eventually the Sherlockian E-Times newsletter. Classic Specialties was the Amazon.com of the Sherlockian world before there was Amazon – a place where one could buy all manner of Holmes-related books and other products. Many of those products were unique, the creation of Joel’s fertile imagination.
|
The Senters traveled widely as members of several Baker Street Irregulars scion societies around the country. Along with the operation of Classic Specialties, that gave them a network of Sherlockian friends far and wide. Droves of them appeared to offer condolences and messages of encouragement to Carolyn when Joel unexpectedly passed beyond the Reichenbach in July 2018.
Carolyn decided to give back to this supportive community, and at the same time keep green Joel’s memory, by creating the R. Joel Senter Memorial Prize for essays by young readers about Sherlock Holmes. It brings together two worlds that meant so much to R. Joel Senter Sr. – education and the Great Detective. |
Joel was fond of quoting a professor of his who said, “He who toots not his own horn, so shall it not be tooted.” But, as Carolyn pointed out, “he never followed his own advice and, indeed, even eschewed his own accomplishments.”
It is her hope that with this prize Joel’s horn shall be un-tooted no more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME WIT AND WISDOM FROM R. JOEL SENTER, SR.
It is her hope that with this prize Joel’s horn shall be un-tooted no more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME WIT AND WISDOM FROM R. JOEL SENTER, SR.
- When hearing or reading a statement/proclamation always ask: Who is the speaker and how the heck do they know?
- Always keep in mind when you hear a report such as 40% of some group does something bad or suffers from some disaster that (in this example) 60% didn't. The presentation of this kind of data is meant to shock. Always take note of the inverse.
- Educated does not equal smart.