Dever's Vast Career, Retirement Focus of Local News

John Dever listens to remarks at his retirement reception at the Peninsula Workforce Development Center on Friday Dec. 13, 2019. Almost all Dever's 45-year community college career was spent in Virginia. (John C. Clark / Daily Press)

Of course he was wearing the tie.

The faculty of the communications and humanities division at Thomas Nelson Community College gave him the tie, styled to look like an illuminated medieval manuscript, when he left the college for the first time after 20 years as a professor and division head.

He wore it under his robes when he was inaugurated as TNCC president in 2011.

He wore it to a retirement celebration put on by the college Dec. 13, and he's wearing it in his official portrait.

John Dever, 74, will retire in mid-January amid personal health issues, as the college continues its attempts to recover from a serious financial crisis. Presenting him with an award for his service, vice president for academic affairs and workforce development Susan English called it a "very challenging year."

"Two thousand nineteen has been a difficult year for me personally," Dever said during his remarks at the celebration, "and as Dr. English mentioned, it's been an exceptionally challenging year for the college."

The former English professor concluded his speech by reading the lyrics of a song, slowly, like it was a Shakespeare sonnet.

Here comes the sun.

Here comes the sun, and I say

It's all right.

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Dever could've been a priest.

He attended a seminary his sophomore and junior years of high school. In an interview, he blamed it on a combination of youthful idealism and a drive to help people.

"I've been able to, through the community colleges, realize the idealism I have to serve others," Dever said. "That's of course a different way than through organized religion."

The son of a car dealer from Lebanon, Kentucky, Dever was the youngest of three boys. After he quit seminary, he wanted to follow his oldest brother to Notre Dame College in Ohio.

He got in, but his father's small-town car dealership had fallen on hard times. Notre Dame offered him only a $25 scholarship.

Instead, he studied history at Bellarmine College in Louisville, a small Catholic liberal arts college that had just opened in 1950. Bellarmine, where he said he really discovered his love of literature, offered him a full ride.

"This happened to me time and time again," Dever said. "I didn't get my first wish, but it all worked out, probably for the better in the end."

He taught high school for a few years before going to the University of Kentucky to get a master's degree in English. Dever was about to move to Texas in search of a job when he got a call from a former classmate who taught at Parkersburg Community College in West Virginia.

Someone had just quit and they needed an instructor urgently. Could he come tomorrow and interview?

The next day, Dever and a professor from UK made the drive. The college gave him the job, kicking off a community college career that would last for the next 45 years.