BJ Rolfzen 2008; photographer uncredited at http://www.storycorps.net/blog/west-mobilebooth/grand-rapids-mn/bob-dylans-english-teacher/ I’m very sorry to learn of the death of Boniface J. Rolfzen, Bob Dylan’s high-school English teacher for two years in the 1950s. He was born in April 1923 and died, aged 86, on Wednesday. He retired from teaching only in 1985, and until recent illness required him to live in a nursing home, he and his wife Leona lived on East 24th Street in Hibbing MN. My own encounters with Mr. Rolfzen were limited but memorable (on my side, anyway). He came to my talk in Hibbing Public Library in April 2001, and though he wasn’t one of those who came up and spoke to me afterwards, I heard later that he had delivered a most complimentary verdict about it; and then on March 24, 2007, arriving in Hibbing for lunch at Zimmys on the bus trip to the town organised as an optional extra for speakers at the Dylan Symposium organised by the University of Minnesota, I was among those who met and chatted to both BJ and his wife. By then I had been able to send him a copy of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia , and in return he gave me, and inscribed, a copy of his self-published The Spring of My Life: a memoir of growing up in a small town in central Minnesota during the Great Depression years 1923-1941 . I respected him greatly, and only this spring on my tour of Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues talks I was enthusing about his contribution to Dylan’s strikingly early self-confidence in and around English and American Literature. “Alex from Grand Rapids Minnesota” ( here ), reports that BJ told her this about when Dylan was in his class: “Robert was shy. I can see him coming through the door of classroom 204. I remember it distinctly because he was always doing the same thing. He always came in to class alone. He always sat in the same chair, three seats from the door in the first row. Right under my nose for two years.” Got to get up near the teacher if you can, if you wanna learn anything…
Go here to see the original:
DEATH OF BONIFACE J. ROLFZEN
