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 JAMES ROGERS |
YOU CAN'T FORGET |
 ALPHEUS GREEN |
Thank the good teachers
before it's way too late
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"The man who can make hard things easy is the educator." ...Ralph Waldo Emerson (...and we think he meant that for women educators, too!) |
of TheColumnists.com
I never thanked
my favorite teacher. I should have, but I never did.
It’s too late now, because he died in 1978.
The last time I saw him he was walking with his wife on Pacific
Avenue, the main street in Santa Cruz, Calif. It must have been
in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s.
As we approached each other, I glanced his way and was about
to say, “Hello, Mr. Rogers.” But I didn’t think
he would remember me, let alone recognize me. I didn’t want
to embarrass him, but, more probably, I didn’t want to make
a fool of myself. Almost 20 years had passed since I had graduated,
and Mr. James Rogers had taught thousands of kids before and
since I took him for second and third year Spanish between 1951
and 1953.
I was a junior--the only boy with eight of the brightest Class
of ‘54 girls in third-year Spanish. One of those eight girls
went on to earn departmental honors in foreign languages; another
was class salutatorian and two others went on to teach Spanish,
one at the high school level and the other at the college level.
(Another of those bright girls is Barbara McFadden, wife of fellow
columnist Chuck McFadden.)
Even though I had earned an “A” in Mr. Rogers’
second-year Spanish, third-year was a real struggle, and I was
performing really poorly. At the end of the first semester, I
told him I couldn’t handle the class. He understood my predicament
but politely persuaded me to stick with it, to not give up because
HE was convinced I could make it. I reluctantly took his advice,
and I made it with a “C.”
At the end of the year, he invited our tiny Spanish class to
his home for dinner. I don’t know any other teacher who
ever did that in high school. He wasn’t the crusty old man
I had imagined. He was a gentle, kind and compassionate man.
A few days after seeing Mr. Rogers downtown 20 years later, I
was going through the morgue of the newspaper where I worked
and happened upon his file. I opened it and got the shock of
my life.
Mr. Rogers had once been a daredevil of a young man who had trained
as a WWI pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille, the American flyers
who fought with the French before the U.S. entered the War To
End All Wars. But his plane crashed during training. He was severely
injured and never flew again. Then I remembered that Mr. Rogers
walked with a barely perceptible limp.
There were a lot of great teachers at SCHS in the ‘50s.
One I never had was Alpheus Green, math teacher extraordinaire.
I was a liberal arts type and not one of those math-science nerds
headed for one of the University of California branches or some
other prestigious institution of higher learning. So, my counselor
was careful not to waste Mr. Green’s time and effort by
placing me in one of his classes.
Mr. Green, one of my ’54 classmates informed me a few years
ago, had once been a Stanford University professor who couldn’t
handle the publish-or-perish pressure imposed at such institutions.
So, he moved down to the high school level, but never lowered
his teaching standards.
When Mr. Green died in 1988, the local newspaper printed many
a letter to the editor from former students praising his talents
in the classroom.
About 15 years ago, my wife, a-now-retired elementary teacher,
and I were having dinner in a local restaurant when one of the
waitresses came over to us and said, “Mrs. Klempnauer, I
want to thank you for turning my daughter around. She hated school
and fought every day to stay home until she was put into your
class.”
Her daughter, the waitress continued, went on to graduate with
honors from high school and to receive a fully paid scholarship
to study in Europe for a year.
Such comments from parents are real booster shots to the morale
of any teacher.
In the final few years of her teaching tenure, my wife witnessed
the loss of three excellent young teachers at her school. They
bailed out early for various reasons. One became an attorney,
another became a real estate agent and the third took a loss
in pay to get out of the public education system and into a private
school.
All three were public education’s loss.
So thank a teacher. Do it now! Maybe your one small gesture of
appreciation will keep a really good teacher in the system.
I’m way too late with mine, but thank you, Mr. Rogers. Thank
you for teaching me to never give up and to stick with whatever
I undertake.
©2006 by Len Klempnauer. The photos are from the author's collection. This column first posted May 29, 2006.
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