“I was seriously thinking about becoming an engineer,” Dr. George Cheatham recalls. “I thought that was the thing to do, but after taking college calculus and chemistry I wasn’t so sure.” 

So how did Dr. Cheatham, an English professor at Greensboro College for 16 years, get started in English and the humanities? “Most of the engineering classes I took I did not like,” he says, “but I had a literature class that I really enjoyed — we read Hamlet, and the professor even made us memorize poetry.” This might seem like an interesting route on an eventual career; however, Cheatham’s intriguing career path is just one part of a life full of fascinating events.

A native of south Arkansas, Dr. Cheatham says that he was no fan of reading as a youngster. “I didn’t read much of anything besides comic books,” he laughs, “until I got to college.” Cheatham originally enrolled at Louisiana Tech University but then transferred to Hendrix College (in Arkansas) to pursue his newfound interest in English. At Hendrix he studied English and was a member of a championship swimming team — as a member of the Hendrix Water Warriors. Cheatham laughs and admits, “I wasn’t a good enough swimmer to have a specialty event like most swimmers do today,” adding, “I suppose the 200 individual medley was my best event.” 

After graduation, he enrolled in the masters program at the University of Tennessee.  Here he not only earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees but also met his wife, Judy.  After earning his Ph.D., Cheatham returned to his native Arkansas and taught at Hendrix for a year. He moved on to teach at a community college in Columbia, Tenn., before teaching for a year at the University of Mississippi. The next stop on Cheatham’s teaching tour was at Eastern Kentucky University, where he taught for several years before coming to Greensboro College in the fall of 1989. 

In 1973, as a senior at Hendrix College, Cheatham had an unusual brush with fame. As one of two Rhodes Scholar finalists from Arkansas he got to spend a weekend with a former Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas who was a first-year law professor at the University of Arkansas. This former Rhodes Scholar eventually went on to be the 42^nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton. 

“I’m sure he doesn’t remember me anymore,” Cheatham says, “but I remember discussing Garcia Marquez’s book 100 Years of Solitude with him. I had never read it, but about a week after meeting Clinton I received a package in the mail — he sent me a copy of the book.” 

More recently, Dr. Cheatham spent a summer studying Shakespeare with the Blackfriars in Stanton, Va., and then later at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London, England. “We studied how the construction of the stage might have influenced Shakespeare’s work, and I even got the opportunity to ‘act’ in Hamlet,” he laughs, quickly pointing out that acting is a subjective term. 

His interest in Shakespeare is one familiar to all who know him. Dr. Cheatham is quick to recite a line from Shakespeare at any time. He teaches honors English, 20^th-century British and American literature, Shakespeare, introduction to English and the senior English seminar. Not surprisingly, he lists Shakespeare as his favorite class to teach. 

Dr. Cheatham lives in Greensboro with Judy, his wife of 24 years. Together they have a son, who is a senior at Washington College, and a daughter, who is a senior in high school.