Biographical Text
Professor Emeritus of English Coulthard was born in Saltville, Virginia, in 1939, and was the first member of his family of six to attend college. He was captain of the football team and president of the student body his senior year of high school. Dr. Coulthard married Betty Lynn Nelson, of North Miami, Florida, in 1963. She is presently serving as a missionary in India. The Coulthards have five children, two of whom are adopted: Scott, who works in academic testing in Wilmington; Amy, award-winning elementary school teacher, who is married to a professor at Amherst; Brian, who owns three clubs in Gretna, Louisana; Taimico, who is freelancing in England; and Jeffrey, a Coast Guardsman engaged in terrorist intervention. Dr. and Mrs. Coulthard have eight grandchildren. After graduating from Concord College in 1962, Coulthard went on to earn an M.A. and a Ph.D. degree from Florida State, where he received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. After teaching a year each at the University of Tennessee and Florida A & M, he found a home at Appalachian State University, where he served under four chairs during his thirty-four years here. For nine years, he was in charge of the freshman writing program. Dr. Coulthard was twice nominated for teaching awards. Three of his prize students are Don Secreast, who has published two volumes of short stories and is a professor at Radford University; Rod Smith, whose poems have twice been nominated for a Pulitzer and who is editor of Shenandoah at Washington & Lee; and Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain. Other students Dr. Coulthard remembers with a special fondness are Cathy Dibello, who Coulthard says had read more books as an undergraduate than he had as her professor; David Cook, amateur poet and professional physician; Chris Yopp, who named his daughter Flannery after Flannery O'Connor from Coulthard's American literature seminar; and Chris Coxe, community college chair and newspaper columnist. Coulthard's proudest professional achievements are his thirty-five articles and his textbook, The Writer's Craft, which was used in Freshman English at Appalachian State for seven years. Since his retirement, two of Courtland's articles have been excerpted in college literature anthologies and a third CD-rommed. Dr. Coulthard is enjoying retirement on his twelve acres in Poplar Grove, where he shares tomatoes with groundhogs and deer. He states that his hobbies of gardening, landscaping, and carpentry are more productive than the poker and pocket billiards of his younger days, though not quite as much fun. He now adds that, "getting old is not for sissies." Sources: Appalachian State University files and personal correspondence. -Dr. Kay R. Dickson
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