It was the start of the spring semester and a teacher preparation day. Which in school lingo means no kids were there, giving their teachers a full day to write lesson plans, duplicate handouts and tests, and conjure up other instruments of torture for their captives.
There’s no telling why I was there that early. Probably I wanted early dibs on the copy machine before a line formed in front of it or it conked out, which it did so often that new staff members usually thought the Xerox repairman was a member of the faculty.Mr. Marcum was there early because he was … Mr. Marcum. I had worked for him for a decade by then and could have probably counted on one hand the times that I had been in the building when he wasn’t. It was almost like he and the school were a single entity. When I thought of one, I thought of the other.
I still do.
Anyway, we were talking about how cold the Christmas holidays had been. It was long enough ago that the annual two-week respite at the end of December was still officially designated as the Christmas Holidays, not the somehow more politically correct Winter Break. A particularly fierce cold front, a real blue norther, had moved in on Christmas Eve and put everything in the deep freezer. Pipes froze in attics, ponds and ditches iced over and folks not used to such frigid shenanigans had to hire plumbers or impose on friends — in my case Van Kent, who I now publicly thank — to repair pipes that had successfully weathered many winters before that one.
One such pipe, it turned out, was the main water line that ran along the top of the wall Mr. Marcum and I were standing beside. That pipe, either choosing that precise moment to fully thaw out and expand or surrendering to the stress of a longer process, suddenly squealed like a tormented pig, snapped loudly and sent a deluge of water gushing out of the wall a few feet from us.
The chances are awfully good that I said a choice word or two at that point. And it was probably a good thing that there were no students thereabouts.
Mr. Marcum said nothing. He looked for a long moment at the water that was still spewing out and sloshing its way down toward the cafeteria. Finally he looked over at me and delivered one of the slow, dry remarks for which he was famous.
“That’s not supposed to happen, I think,” he said.
His tone of voice didn’t change. Nor his facial expression. Nor his quiet, assured demeanor. Which didn’t surprise me a bit.
Because, you see, Mr. Marcum never changed. And that was one reason so many students and teachers and parents held him in such high regard. I think I heard him raise his voice twice, both times at obnoxious kids whose behavior would have launched other people, like me, completely into the stratosphere.
You always knew what you would get from him. He was a consistently calm, almost shy, personable, witty man always in a necktie and usually in a suit who was, despite his deceptively quiet manner, always completely in charge.
He retired the next year. But he came back up to the school whenever one of his successors asked for his advice. And on at least one occasion when he wasn’t asked. He’d learned that all of the framed group photographs of the graduating classes had been removed from the entryway and he didn’t like that. So he had a little sit-down in his old office with its occupant at the time, because Mr. Marcum believed a school’s history was important.
So do lots of other people who knew him. So consider yourself invited to the formal dedication of the H.E. Marcum 9th Grade Center at Brazoswood High School on Monday at 4 p.m.
I can’t think of a better way to honor a much loved and respected educator than to name a schoolhouse after him. And though Mr. Marcum is sadly no longer with us in person, I have a strong feeling he’ll be there in spirit.
By the way, those rows of group photos I just told you about were back on that wall pretty quickly.
Award-winning author Ron Rozelle has written seven books. He teaches creative writing at Brazoswood High School. He can be reached at ronrozelle@sbcglobal.net.
© 2010 Ron Rozelle
