Mr. Underhill, what a great thread. Fascinating to read how many lives are shaped by the Legendarium...
Listing my major cultural influences, I'd say 5% (perhaps less) "Once and Future King", 10% "Chronicles of Narnia", 20% "Star Trek" (including my dad's deep critical analyses of Kirk's decisions) and the rest-- about 65%?-- Tolkien.
I read the trilogy at 12 or 13 yrs of age.
Elves, elves, elves. Lothlorien was The Place to Be, Rivendell was pretty good too; and there one found Virtue, Holiness, Truth, Honesty, Justice, Sincerity, Love of what is Good. The natural beauty, the harmony with nature, and the singing (in the trees! under the stars!) didn't hurt either. Aragorn, and Frodo, and Faramir, showed such integrity, I always admired and trusted them. Gondor showed valor as did Rohan.
What wasn't affected by this during my teenage years? Not much. Art,
music, writing... elvish or Gondorian, or Rohirric. I majored in physics because I wanted to be an astronomer; love of the stars, which came from the elves.
Ballet and
flute were a direct result of "Tinuviel was dancing there to music of a pipe unseen." Celtic music;
harp (I
made one from scrap lumber). The clothes I chose, the jewellry... what I listened to. Anything that reminded me of Tolkien musically: celtic I mentioned already. Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell haunted me with a few Tolkienish songs. Moody Blues and Tuesday afternoon. Tschaikovsky was especially ultra-cool because all of his music was obviously about elves and hobbits; you could tell just by listening. Anything that reminded me of Tolkien's elves and hobbits was intriguing.
Naturally I tried to find more books of that caliber. But of all the other realms I looked into, none ever really "held water" after Lord of the Rings. I kept hoping to find that integrity, love of truth and goodness, holiness, virtue. I tossed many fantasy novels aside in sheer disgust. Nothing came close.
Eventually, I found those things in The Gospels, and recognized there what I had loved from the first. And the more I read the Letters of Tolkien, the more I believe that that is exactly what he intended; that his sub-creation myth would point to what he called "The One True Myth": incarnation, death, resurrection, new creation.
In that (rather evangelical) sense, Tolkien was the most effective element drawing me toward the gospel and the savior. I hope someday I can tell him "thanks."
(Edit: do I think I would be a different person without Tolkien's influence? Vastly.)