Teachers
Incredible teachers who put me on the road to lifelong learning
A CHANCE meeting with a friend led to a conversation about the importance of a good education. I was reminded of how blessed I was to have had excellent teachers who had a positive influence on my life, two of whom were not school teachers. I was further reminded that 2024 marks my son’s 25th year as an elementary school teacher in the LA school district. I’m slightly prejudiced, but he qualifies as an incredible teacher. All my memorable teachers were impressive, not only for what they taught me, but for the methods and personalities they brought to my education.
My first grade teacher, Sister Agnes Marie, was a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph at the Cathedral School in Buffalo, N.Y. She must have just graduated from Nun School because, even as a six-year old, I recognized that she was younger and prettier than the other nuns. It was difficult to adhere to the commandment not to put false idols before me, while idolizing the good sister. Her smile lit up the drab heavily wood-paneled classroom. Had Disney drawn her, she would have been Snow White in a black cloak. She made the flatness of Dick, Jane, Baby Sally, and Spot the dog, come alive and jump off the page. Then there was 2 + 2 = 4. My goodness, how could anyone so beautiful devise such an extraordinarily precise mathematical system? Oh, she had so many tricks up the wide sleeves of that flowing black habit.
Same school, fourth grade. Mrs. Catherine Doucher was the only lay teacher in the school. Our predecessors warned us about the “ouch” in Doucher, as she was known as a hard taskmaster. She wasn’t. Mrs. Doucher understood that what she was teaching us would stay with us for the rest of our lives. She drummed those “times-tables” into us with such energy that spanning two millennia I can still rattle them off. We practiced the Palmer method until our cursive was legible, and we traveled the Lincoln Highway from Chicago to LA, more than two thousand miles all the way. The lessons she taught definitely stayed with me all my life.
High School. Freshman English with the Rev. Robert Cromey, OMI. What great transgression did this gentle Shakespearean scholar, this erudite literary intellectual, this well-read and bred academic commit, to be saddled with 30 slang-encrusted immature teenagers? Fr. Cromey could have doubled for the cultured James Lipton on “Inside the Actors Studio” television show. He had us submit an original piece of writing every Monday morning, without imposing any limitations on genre or style. A short story, fine. A memory, OK. An off-color limerick, have at it, kid. We read “MacBeth,” “The Merchant of Venice,” and “Julius Caesar,” and had to memorize and recite a soliloquy of our choice — a piece of cake for me, because another memorable teacher had already schooled me in Shakespeare.
Her title was Mom. She had a twelfth grade education and made our home a school before there was home schooling. I didn’t know who Mother Goose was, but I was on intimate terms with Portia from “the Merchant of Venice.” Movies were part of her curriculum. I’m sure I was the only second grader who knew that Hollywood actors George Sanders and Tom Conway were brothers, and that Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland were sisters. Before I was out of corduroy knickers, I memorized Mark Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” soliloquy, and knew that the quality of mercy was not strained, but “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”
The year was 1953. Summer jobs were hard to find for teenage boys. The workers at Bethlehem Steel were out on strike, and the breweries and supermarkets weren’t hiring. My mother, a local pol, called in a couple of markers from her cronies and landed me a job as a book-page at our neighborhood branch library. There I met the diminutive Mrs. Rita Deckoff, the librarian who influenced my reading for the rest of my life. She stood a tad over five feet tall, could barely see over the card catalogues (remember those?) yet had a commanding presence that left no doubt she was in charge. Through casual conversation she discovered that my reading habits needed upgrading. She was just the person to guide me. Soon I was reading Dos Passos, O’Hara, Marquand, Cozzens, and Koestler. Each reading was followed by a discussion of the book. Later I recognized that this little lady with the big brain was teaching me how to read, analyze, and think.
None of these amazing people ever received the recognition they deserved while accomplishing outcomes beyond the simple transmission of information. All had big ideas and knew how to imbed them into an untrained mind. Each uniquely inspired lifelong learning and played an important role in shaping my future. I was blessed to come under their tutelage.
Contact Jerry at jerrygervase@yahoo.com
