Latin’s influence more prevalent than you think

I liked the Dec. 8 article about Latin being taught at Xavier High School.

When I attended Cresco High School in the 1940s, I took the two years of Latin that were offered. When my mother graduated from the same school in 1912 (the year the Titanic sank), she'd had three years of that subject, besides German.

Recently, in a conversation with Ben Allen, the president of the University of Northern Iowa, he mentioned that he'd had four years of Latin.

Dr. Frank Coyle, who cured me of lung cancer 21 years ago, attended Holy Cross College as an undergraduate. Whenever I visited his office, I noticed that his diploma was written entirely in Latin.

I've always found beauty in abstract knowledge. To me, the specific form of each Latin verb is a function of six independent variables. That phenomenon used to fascinate me, in a way that the structure of Mendeleev's Periodic Table of the Elements also did.

Gerald Baker

Cedar Falls