DOUGLAS HERRING Author Jack Cady, who taught Pacific Lutheran University, died in January.

LISA KREMER; The News Tribune

Jack Cady, a truck driver turned author and literature professor, was lying in a hospital bed dying of bladder cancer when his friend Marjorie Rommel came to visit.

"She said, 'Well, I've done a little preliminary work, and we're going to have a scholarship in your name,'" remembered Carol Orlock, Cady's wife. "Jack just lit up. You did not need electricity in the hospital that day, because he was so happy."

Cady, an award-winning science-fiction author who taught at Pacific Lutheran University for 13 years, died in January at age 71. The Jack Cady Promise Scholarship Fund is already a $5,000 account intended to help struggling writers attend the school's new Rainier Writing Workshop.

Writers and school officials will celebrate the new scholarship and writing program at a reception on Thursday. Local authors and professors, including Chuck Bergman, Rick Jones, Lesley Hazelton, Madeline DeFrees and Ann Pancake will read from their own work and from Cady's.

Cady wanted the fund to benefit people who, like him, came from an unlikely background but worked and dreamed to become a writer.

Cady's father was a jack-of-all-trades who worked whatever jobs he could find, from auctioneer to refrigerator repairman. Cady worked odd jobs himself, and joined the Coast Guard during the Korean War because he was a conscientious objector. After his service, he went to college and got a degree in sociology, then worked as a warehouseman, gardener and truck driver, Orlock said.

"All the time he was writing," she said. "He would balance an old typewriter on the seat of his truck. He did it because he didn't know he couldn't."

Cady published in trucker's magazines and kept submitting fiction to the Atlantic Monthly. Eventually he was published, and won the magazine's fiction award.

Other prizes followed, and a career in teaching. Cady wrote science fiction and fantasy, and won the Nebula, Philip K. Dick, World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards. His first major book was "The Burning and Other Stories." Other novels include "The Hauntings of Hood Canal," "The Off Season" and "Street: A Novel," all published by St. Martin's Press, and "Inagehi" published by Broken Moon Press.

He was a much-beloved teacher, said Rommel, who was one of Cady's students. After she had known him several years and was working at a newspaper, she said, Cady called her one day and said she needed to work harder on her poetry and fiction writing.

"His boot hit my backside," she said. "He said I was the gift to God he was going to give that year, and he sneaked me into his classes. I just wallowed, and it was wonderful. He was the best teacher I ever had.

"He made it clear to me that with a lot of work and some luck I might be able to accomplish something. And I believed him, when I wasn't able to believe anyone else."

Rommel is a published poet whose works include "The Grandmothers Go to War."

The Rainier Writing Workshop is a three-year, four-summer master's degree program that begins this summer. Students will attend an intense, two-week study session each summer, then work one-on-one with a writing professor throughout the year. Students are coming to the program from all over the country and will spend most of the year in their home town, corresponding with their professors. That's why the program is called "low-residency," said Tom Campbell, chairman of PLU's English Department.

The program was designed for 12 to 15 students, but "the response was so overwhelming and the quality of applicants was so good that it's 22 to 24 students in the first class," Campbell said.

Professors at the college are thrilled with the new writing program and with the Cady scholarship.

"He took teaching really seriously, and he took students seriously," Campbell said. "There was a kind of real sincerity and authenticity to him that students responded to."

Lisa Kremer: 253-597-8658
lisa.kremer@mail.tribnet.com

SIDEBAR: Reception set for Thursday

A reception to inaugurate the new Rainier Writing Workshop and celebrate the new Jack Cady Promise Scholarship Fund will be at 4 p.m. Thursday in Room 100 of Ingram Hall, Pacific Lutheran University, 1010 122nd St. S., Parkland.

To contribute to the Jack Cady Promise Scholarship Fund, mail checks to the fund at the Rainier Writing Workshop, Tracy Williamson, Division of Humanities, Administration Building, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA 98447-0003. Donors of more than $40 will receive a copy of a Jack Cady book. Books also will be available at the reception.