Thursday, July 26, 2012
Mrs. Barbara Carter Recently, my favorite high school teacher passed away. Mrs. Barbara Carter. Her husband, Mr. Carter, was the superintendent at Kiefer School when I was in school Mrs. Carter was an English teacher and a librarian. I owe a lot of my reading to her. As a junior high nerdy kid poking around in the library, she found out what I liked to read and fed me the novels of ray Bradbury. I devoured those and continued to read everything he write for the next 38 years. She introduced me to others, including Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” and Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” She had me reading Orwell’s “1984” and Frank’s “Alas Babylon.” Mrs. Carter was my English teacher during my junior year. That year, we did a school play… a pretty big endeavor for a class of our small size, especially since the play was Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Mrs. Carter cast me in the part of the narrator, a character that appears and comments in every scene. I was terrified, but when we completed the play, very happy, and satisfied that we had done it. Recently I was exchanged notes with Mrs. Carter through her daughter Connie’s Facebook. I am so glad I was able to do that. In closing, Mrs. Carter said if she ever put on a play again, I would be her narrator. I was touched that she remembered that. Today, our upstairs is filled with books. Everyone in this house is a reader, and I am married to a literature teacher and I am a teacher. No surprise. My poor words do not adequately convey how much her attention and interest affected my life. What a wonderful teacher we have lost, but each of us lucky enough to be her student is better for that experience.
