talkingroots: My heroes

May 15, 2009
My Heroes

I don’t guess it would surprise many people that among the top ten heroes of my life several were teachers.

Like everyone, I suppose, the nature of my heroes changed as I got older. In the 1940’s there was Roy Rogers. That hero worship would later turn to admiration as I followed his life while I was an adult. The “King of the Cowboys” first fascinated us in the movie theater and then on early television. Since I was a child during the last years of WWII and the post-war years, I guess it would also be no surprise that John Wayne playing WWII and old Western (especially U. S. cavalry) roles was a great favorite. We were children of a war era.

In the 1950’s like most kids, “I Like(d) Ike,” first WWII Allied Europe commander and General Dwight D. Eisenhower and then U. S. President. I remember going downtown in Longview to the Republican headquarters and getting “I Like Ike” buttons and wearing to Foster Junior High and passing out extras to friends. Also, in the 1950’s there was Mickey Mantle. In an era before Texas major league baseball teams and even before the Dallas Cowboys, for most kids, the New York Yankees were America’s team. Mickey was the young, talented player most of us could identify with and look up to.
I had a number of teachers in school who I thought were the “bees knees,” but they three I most looked up to and, in many ways, took traits and procedures for my own teaching career were Mr. Glover, Mrs. Bourne, and Mrs. Prejean. To this day I think of them like that, and I would be very uncomfortable calling them by their first names.

Mr. Robert “Bob” Glover was my Tyler, Texas John Tyler High School American history teacher. His class was fascinating. His teaching style separated him from all my other teachers. It was like we were hearing stories and not studying history. After class was over, his students would often talk about what we had learned in class that day. I joined the high school history club mainly because Mr. Glover was sponsor.

Mrs. Mary Bourne was a bit scary. While I was in high school, I dreaded going to her Senior English class. She expected you to be prepared, to participate, and to get it right. She was tough, and I had to step up to the plate in that class. We studied English literature and related English history. For that reason, she was nicknamed “Bloody Mary,” but I know of no one who ever called her that in her presence. When I got to college (and in later years), I was better prepared for college English than many who not had her as a teacher. To this day, I appreciate her as a dedicated teacher who had our best interests at heart.

Mrs. Blanche Prejean was my journalism teacher at Tyler Junior College. She was also tough and a bit scary. She demanded your best preparation and effort. You knew better than to not deliver it. Work habits, diligence in research and writing, accepting that rewriting would be a way of life and path to excellence, and a love for traditional journalism were learned in her classes and labs and as student sports editor.

As a teacher, I never thought of myself as on the same level as these three, but trying to get to that level made me better than I would have been on my own and has kept me trying to improve even to this day. You never saw them on the silver screen or television, but they are forever among those (including my wife and parents) on the pedestals reserved for the special people who have guided me to where I am today. My heroes.

Source: talkingroots.wordpress.com