Tribute to a Teacher

My dad died on Ash Wednesday, February 25. He was 91 and tired. And his death leaves a Bert Bishop-sized hole in my world.

Daddy was a teacher, a good one, funny and smart and tough. Up until the last, he maintained his sense of humor, even managing to indicate irritation or levity when he could do nothing more than move his eyebrows. I've posted a tribute to him on my website (www.laurenbishopweidner.com), in the essays section.

Teachers are a quirky bunch, unpredictable, uncontrollable, irreverent folks who often find it difficult to play well with others. Daddy definitely marched to his own drummer--his stubbornness was legendary, maybe even epic. His steadfast belief in students not bound for college produced some pretty amazing results over his long career.

There were many, but a few stand out--they have names and stories, but those aren't mine to share. Attorneys, physicians, accountants, engineers, pastors, nurses--so many professionals who didn't think they were "college material" responded to Daddy's methods and encouragement. Some after a military enlistment, others after an unhappy few years in the dirty and dangerous mines, still others after a couple of children and a divorce.

"He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Daddy did that, to the best of his ability, for 91+ years. He lived. May we all live as richly.

Tribute to a Teacher

He was a teacher--this was the first and most vivid impression he gave. He was one whose personality did not contract into his profession, but on the contrary his calling, for it was more than an occupational pursuit, broadened and streamed into his entire being.

He was a teacher, and therefore his was a poetic sensitivity to growth, to enlargement. Only a poet hears the grass grow, witnesses the flowers in their actual blossoming, beholds the ripening in process in field and meadow. And only a teacher actually sees the seedlings of the youthful mind reaching out for the light, germinating and sprouting under the loving touch of an inspired gardener.

He was a teacher and therefore a creative artist working in the most precious and
intricate of all media--the human complex of mind and heart and conscience. To mold and to evoke, to guide and to ignite, and yet not to trespass upon the inner integrity and individuality of the child--this was the incredibly difficult and significant task upon which he was set.

He was a teacher and therefore one who is forever bent on the greatest adventure of all, the exploration of another's mind, the delving into another spirit to mine, uncover and bring forth into the light the possibilities that lie hidden in the deeps. No diver descended into the sea in search of treasure, no explorer journeyed to unknown continents with greater anticipation and higher excitement.

He was a teacher, and therefore he loved his fellowman. Neither his skill nor his diligence were substituted for the love which led him to devote himself to the instruction of his neighbor and his neighbor's child.

He was a teacher and therefore one who revered the word, honored ideas, exalted thought and fostered the great dream. He was a teacher and knew with conviction that the hope of men lies not in their machines or in their power or in their uncultivated ego but in the refinement, mutuality and sensitivity which the thinker, poet, saint and dreamer awaken in them. He sought to redeem men, not by enlarging their mastery over the
outer world but by cultivating their inner universe.

--Rabbi Morris Adler