[This is an article I submitted to our local paper. I just sort of emerged over the last few months as I've been searching for classmates and thinking back to those times.]

I JUST WANT TO THANK MY TEACHERS

I see the TV is full of advertisements for back to school clothing and school supplies. Meanwhile I am finding lost classmates for my 60th high school reunion that’s going to take place in September. Who wants to think about those days? They were so awkward! But as I do think back on those times, I really realize what gifts I was given by my teachers back in the day.

I think it starts with my first teacher, my grandmother, who gave me the best piece of advice I’ve ever had. One time, when I asked for the larger box of crayons that my classmates had, she said to me, with all love, “Do what you can with what you’ve got, child.” That is been the best advice I’ve had in my whole life. Thank you, Gramma!

But at high school I had an extraordinary group of teachers who helped me and who gave me so many more gifts. The most important gift I remember is from a teacher whose name I can’t recall. One day one of her students said to her, “I don’t wanna learn this stuff. Why do I need to learn it? I’ll never use it.” She gave him that long teacher stare for a minute and then said quietly, “We’re not teaching you “stuff”. We’re teaching you how to think.” I said to myself, “What?” It took me some time the understand that she didn’t mean she was teaching us WHAT to think. She meant she was teaching us how to think through problems. How to gather resources. How to weigh the value of one resource against another and to apply them to whatever situation we were addressing. She was teaching us how to take a hold of our lives and be able to manage them, to move them forward. She was teaching us how to carry our life forward by doing what the bunny heroin police woman in Zootopia calls “taking the next right step”, an extraordinary gift for my life. Thank you, ma’am.

The two teachers I remember most clearly are Miss Ochoa and Armand Mauss. I found out much later, when I was doing another of these of class reunion preparations, that Miss Ochoa came as a young child refugee to Canada. Her large Basque family were refugees from Franco‘s Spain. In high school in Vancouver she was on a provincial championship girl’s hockey team. I knew she was tough but I would never have guessed that. She used to walk around the classroom with a ruler in one hand. I hadn’t yet heard stories of nuns who would swat students with a ruler if they said or did the wrong thing. She didn’t hit us but she would strike her own palm for emphasis sometimes. That made a distinct impression. You hoped never to be wrong in her class. She would greet your wrong answer with a silence that deepened and widened until it was like a pit you were going to fall into. Really scary! That pushed me to work harder and do better than I had ever imagined I could. She taught me to push the boundaries, to take that next step even when I am exhausted and didn’t want to try any more. That has been another unparalleled gift in my life. Thank you, Miss Ochoa!

Mr. Mauss help me learn to look up and out beyond my little suburban town into the big wide world. He was the son of the overseer of Mormon missionaries in East Asia, working on a doctorate in the sociology of religion at UC Berkeley. He worked full time as a teacher to support his large family. He took a station wagon full of us on a trip to a conference run by the American Friends Service Committee. I was held at the Asilomar Conference center near Carmel, over a weekend when I must’ve been a junior in high school. The two speakers were expected to be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Rockefeller. Dr. King couldn’t come because he had a schedule conflict. His associate, Ralph Abernathy, came in his place and talked about the civil rights movement. We joined hands and sang “We shall overcome.” Then Nelson Rockefeller talked about domestic politics and international relations. Their words opened my eyes to things beyond what I had seen before. That combined with a Japanese dinner that Mr. Mauss treated us to on Cannery Row in Monterey on our way home. I don’t know what would have broadened my horizons that much or given me such a taste for the adventures of learning - going and seeing and touching and tasting other cultures, even now in the American Midwest. Thank you, Mr. Mauss.

Now I can’t really brag about my teachers without bragging about my classmates and what we’ve achieved over the years. One of the things I do for the class is to find obituaries or other biographical material about our classmates who have died. I am stunned by our collective accomplishments.  One man worked for a think tank in DC. He wrote the definitive work on how China’s management of its economy and international relations would to affect the US economy in years to come.

Another man, a Vietnam veteran, was an auto mechanic up in Siskiyou County which is now in flames. He started out with a general shop but ended up specializing in motorcycles and then classic cars. He started a motorcycle club in that area for other vets. When he died, his online obituary was followed by condolences written by members of the club.  They gave voice to how many of them had found healing in those rides and conversations. He had helped them come to terms with a difficult time in their past.

Still another of our classmates started a children’s theater group in the Seattle area. Think of how that must’ve helped those children blossom and grow and gain confidence.

Recently I had a phone conversation with a classmate who is a ranch wife in South Dakota on the North Dakota border. She’s there because her husband‘s father was getting too old to really manage the ranch. Her husband wanted to move back and manage it for him because he loved his dad. And she loved him. So off they went from their budding urban careers to about as remote an area as I can imagine. She already had a masters in social work. I hope she was able to find a place to use that in that county. When I talked to her on the phone she was organizing her daughters in-law and some friends to feed a crew that was coming in to do branding. I thought of how extraordinary it was that a rich kid from Lafayette would find her life there.

The last one I want to mention is in my opinion our class hero.  Matt Terry left his pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter on a beach in Oregon. He went to use his rescue swimmer training from his naval service in Vietnam to save a group of Girl Scouts and their leader who had been caught in an undertow and pulled out into the Pacific. He and the scout leader and one scout drowned but the rest were saved. When our class gathered for its 50th reunion, I had already told this story on our website. I think that a group of his buddies decided to invite his son to join us at our 50th reunion. They sat together at a table all evening telling him stories about the father he had never known.

There have been a lot of professors, teachers, preachers, documentary film makers, journalists and others who have helped me learn since those days. But I owe an incomparable debt to those teachers at Le Conte, Montecito, Stanley and Acalanes for helping us become the people we are today. And for helping us learn how to do the things that we can do now. Thank you.