About a month ago, I received a newsletter from Judge Jim announcing his retirement from the bench. I almost tossed it in the trash as one more piece of junk mail. As I started to discard it, I noticed the address, Carrollton, TX. There is no reason for a politician in Texas to be sending me a newsletter.
And so, I sat down and read every word of the page and half, belated Christmas letter in the format of “Court Briefs.” Although I recognized names of places, the name of the sender still was allusive. During the past year, I have received invitations to the 50th reunion from both the high school class I graduated with and the one I attended school with, I thought perhaps this judge was a classmate. The yellowed yearbook pages denied that possibility.
After a couple of weeks of pondering, I remembered that I had taught a young man with the same last name during my first teaching job at South Oak Cliff High School in Dallas, 1958-1961. I know that I did not made this connection earlier because I remembered how adamant he had been that I call him James, not Jim nor Jimmy. The young man that I taught dreamed of being a beatnik poet reading his works in hazy coffee shops.
His love of the written word and that of a number of his fellow classmates prompted me to persuade the administration to allow us to organize The Creative Writing Club. Admission to each meeting was an original poem, short story or essay. The entire meeting evolved around each student’s reading of his new work.
Finally, I wrote a letter to Judge Jim asking if the two could possibly be one and the same. I mailed my letter from Jesup on Monday. Friday, I received a three-page e-mail which began, “Yes, it is I.”
Because I graduated from college when I was 20 years old, I was not much older than these high school students when I began to teach; but I find it incredulous that my very first students are beginning to retire. Even more humbling is the fact that any of them would remember me enough to make an effort to locate and contact me.
Judge Jim, as he refers to himself, married shortly out of high school, but he eventually graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with, that’s right, a degree in English. That thought causes my heart to flutter a bit. While there, he worked for the student newspaper.
Later, he began Masters studies in Religious Education at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. However, sending their daughter to college preempted his completion of this second degree. He worked first with the U. S. Postal Service where his boss persuaded him to return to college. He then sold insurance before he served as an assistant to an elected official. Eight years ago, he was elected Justice of the Peace, an area encompassing much of greater Dallas. Perhaps, the highlight of his job was performing the marriage ceremony for his second daughter and her husband. He writes, “Few men have that opportunity.” He has also made more than a dozen mission trips to Mexico.
At his retirement, which he compared to a high school commencement, he announced that his life had been “as a tapestry with each strand representing someone and that person’s influence on me. Whether a teacher, a friend from youth, a political friend, a brother in the faith, a litigant in court or perhaps an attorney who represented a client in the court, each has left an influence on my life. And I have learned from each.”
Of course, the reference to “teacher” probably pushed my thoughts in his direction because he occasionally called me “Teach.” However, it was the appreciative recognition that he gave his wife of 41 years, his mother, his children and grandson, his first boss, friends, the court clerks and Gene Autry which really opened the door of recollection. I remember this student as one of the most thoughtful young men that I’ve ever taught.
With retirement, he now seeks a new mission. As I have done with so many former students, I have suggested that he consider teaching. However, he may return to his love for writing.
Each day that teachers are in the classroom, we encounter the sheer satisfaction that comes in helping students make new discoveries about a subject, the world, or themselves. Certainly, that sense of pleasure heightens whenever students remember us either if we meet by chance or especially if they have make the effort to seek us out. To be so remembered is both heady and humbling. And to have that recognition come in the form of such a grammatically correct response as, “Yes, it is I,” is truly heartwarming for an old English teacher. Judge Jim, aka beat poet James, thank you for remembering.
2005
Σχόλια