Article
from Winston-Salem Journal
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Article
from Winston-Salem Journal
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Balancing ActGod has had some good laughs with Sam Gladding's life.
Counselor-author-academic says yes, yes, yes, yes to life. By Kim Underwood
JOURNAL REPORTER
FULL OF ENERGY: Sam Gladding runs down the sideline as a team he coaches plays a soccer match. His 10-year-old son plays on the team. (Journal Photo by Chris English)
Gladding is the associate provost and the director of the
counseling program at Wake Forest University. He is also a
teacher, a writer of books and articles, a poet, a husband, a father,
a soccer coach and a Cub Scout den leader.
Some of those things he planned to become. Others he did not. As
Gladding is fond of saying, ''People plan and God laughs.''
As different as Gladding's life has turned out from the one he was
planning at various times along the way, he is a man who finds his
life satisfying.
''I think I am one of the luckiest people alive,'' Gladding said.
Gladding, 53, grew up in Decatur, Ga., thinking he was going to
become a minister. After graduating from Wake Forest University
in 1967, he went to Yale Divinity School, where he earned a
master of arts degree in religion.
But something about becoming a minister didn't feel right. At the
suggestion of a mentor, he decided to explore the field of
counseling. He returned to Wake Forest and entered its graduate
program in counselor education. (Gladding later earned a
doctorate in family relations at the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro.)
Counseling proved to be his calling. After adding the role of writer
and professor to that, he thought that's what he would be for the
rest of his career. He was a professor and coordinator of the
marriage and family counseling program at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham -- ''I thought I would live there forever'' --
when God laughed again and sent Thomas K. Hearn Jr., the
president of Wake Forest, his way.
On a trip Gladding took to Wake Forest to give a talk, Hearn told
him he was looking for a personal assistant.
''I kind of laughed,'' Gladding said.
Hearn was serious, though, and in 1990, Gladding returned to
Wake Forest as assistant to Hearn and director of the counseling
program. Last year, he became associate provost.
Gladding likes to think that the skills he developed as a counselor
come into play in his current responsibilities.
''I think and I hope I'm a pretty good listener,'' he said. ''I can
usually hear the feeling as well as the content.''
In the process of writing a dozen books and more than 100
articles about counseling -- ''sometimes I think I have written
everything I know plus some'' -- and serving as president of
several national organizations, Gladding has become one of the
more prominent men in the field. His books, such as Counseling:
A Comprehensive Profession, have been translated into such
languages as Polish and Swedish and are used in such countries as
China and Bangladesh.
His work was recognized recently when the Association for
Counselor Education and Supervision gave him its Professional
Leadership Award, and the Association for Specialist in Group
Work awarded him its highest honor -- the Eminent Career
Award.
Gladding put the two plaques that came with the awards on a table
behind his desk in Reynolda Hall that was already well-populated
with plaques.
''My dentist says I'm getting plaque build-up,'' Gladding said.
Along the way, Gladding also became a husband and father. But
God took a while to get around to taking care of that part of his
life. As Gladding puts it, it happened ''under the wire, so to
speak.''
Gladding, who specializes in group and family counseling, was 40
when he married Claire Tillson. Then came three children in five
years. He hadn't given up hope by the time Claire came along, he
said, but he had to laugh a little when it actually happened.
''She always reminds me that she made me credible, and I'm
grateful,'' he said.
GLADDING'S LIFE has enough responsibilities to fill two lives.
As associate provost, he supervises the university's offices of
admissions, financial aid, institutional research, international
studies, research and sponsored programs, and registrar. And, in
addition to overseeing the master's degree program in counseling,
he throws in teaching a course or two each semester.
At home, he isn't content with just the day-to-day responsibilities
that come with having a wife and three sons. He has also taken on
the jobs of coaching one son's soccer team and being the den
leader for another son's Cub Scout pack.
He does all this while giving the the people he is dealing with the
impression he has time aplenty.
''He does all of it with a certain grace,'' said Donna Henderson, an
associate professor in the counselor education program.
Henderson said that some people she knows who live such full
lives spread themselves too thin and become cranky or don't give
their families the kind of attention they deserve.
''Sam does not do that,'' she said. ''He balances it beautifully and
does so with an unhurried attitude. It doesn't matter who he is
talking to, I don't think he makes anybody feel they are rushed.''
Judie Homer, a graduate of the counseling program's first class
and a counselor in private practice in Winston-Salem, also speaks
highly of Gladding.
''One of the highest compliments I can pay anyone is that they are
a very good listener, and he is an outstanding listener,'' Homer
said. ''When he is with me, I feel like he is really caring about me.''
In addition to writing articles with such titles as ''Ethical Dilemmas
in Adlerian Psychotherapy'' and ''Poetry, Computer and Positive
Mental Health,'' Gladding also writes poetry.
Often, he uses his poems at the beginnings of chapters. His wife,
he said, accuses him of writing books so he can get his poems
published.
His poems often grow out of some thought that comes to him
while working with a client.
''It begins to take off from a work or a phrase or a feeling,''
Gladding said. ''Usually, it kind of demands to be written down, so
I do it.''
The poems take the form of free verse in a kind of stream of
consciousness.
''It's more stream of client,'' he said.
Gladding also enjoys the other writing he does.
''You get kind of a natural high when you begin to get into it,'' he
said.
At present, Gladding is working on a dictionary of counseling
He didn't begin writing seriously until after he completed his
master's degree. That he has become a writer would no doubt
come as a surprise to his high school teachers, he said. ''I'm sure
my high school teachers must be shaking their heads . . . but they
did prepare me well.''
In some ways, being a counselor is not all that different from being
a minister. As a counselor, Gladding has tried to help people in
their quest for meaning.
''I think people live their lives to the fullest when they can find
meaning inside themselves regardless of what is happening on the
outside,'' he said.
Gladding said he thinks that people have a good deal of choice in
life, but, if you say life is going to be such-and-such a way, you're
going to have problems. Things happen -- illness, falling in love --
''that give us surprise and pause.''
''I think people get better or they get bitter,'' he said. ''I hope they
get better.''
GLADDING -- WHOSE full name is Samuel Templeman
Gladding -- was born the third of three children. His father was a
small businessman, and his mother was a schoolteacher.
''I grew up in a pretty neat household,'' Gladding said. ''Both my
parents were Virginians. That's always a mixed blessing.''
He laughed. Being the child of Virginians means that you learn a lot
of history and a lot of attention is paid to behavior and manners, he
said.
The Templeman part of his name came from a grandfather who
was a Baptist minister. That heritage was part of what drew him to
the ministry. By the time he earned his master's degree, though, he
had changed his mind.
''I enjoyed the study, but I didn't think it was where I should be
vocationally,'' he said. ''It didn't feel right. So, I thought, 'This shall
be a sign unto you.' ''
He met Claire when he was teaching at Fairfield University in
Connecticut.
''We met in church -- always a nice thing,'' he said.
She was a librarian.
''I always joke about checking her out, and it's certainly been in
teresting reading,'' he said.
They married 13 years ago in Davis Chapel at Wake Forest,
choosing it as a spot between Georgia and Connecticut. Gladding
now refers to Claire as an out-of-circulation librarian. She stopped
working outside the home to take primary responsibility for their
three sons: Ben, a sixth-grader at Cook Middle School; Nate, a
fourth-grader at Sherwood Forest Elementary School; Tim, a
second-grader at Sherwood Forest Middle School.
Gladding starts his day at 6 a.m. He awakens Ben, who goes to
school before the other two, and gets him going. After taking the
dog out, he awakens his wife and Nate and Tim. He walks Ben to
the bus stop and they talk about his day. These days, he does
most of his writing after the children have gone to bed.
Although Gladding is grateful for the life he has been given, it
doesn't leave him much in the way of free time.
''Every now and again I will take a vegetable time,'' Gladding said.
''But those times are few and far between. But I enjoy being
busy.''
Published: May 13, 1999
