When I began teaching in 1969 I
was a callow 22-year-old with more than enough ideas for innovation and
change. My classmates and I were eager to tackle a system which we
perceived as hidebound and stodgy. We were full of plans to bring
"relevance" to the curriculum and give voice to the voiceless. Jerry
Rubin, founder of the Youth International Party, had famously urged
"Don't trust anyone over thirty!" I don't know how many of us fully
embraced that (and Rubin himself was by then 31), but as fresh-faced
faculty members we did find that the old guard, the protectors of the
hidebound and the stodgy, were determined not to trust anyone
under thirty.
Leslie Dean Taylor was nearing fifty when I met him. He taught business
subjects – typing, bookkeeping, office practice, business writing. He
was unmarried, bookish and shy, a private man who kept to himself,
attended church and Sunday school every week, and still lived in the
house he'd grown up in. His classroom was just down the hall from mine
and, looking back, I would say that of all my new colleagues he would
be among those I had the least in common with. Nevertheless, he became
my friend, doing most of the work to establish the relationship and
keep it going.
That first year he stopped by my room countless times to ask how I was
doing. He offered advice, sympathy when I ran afoul of some tradition I
was unaware of (such as showing in English class the favorite film of a
formidable member of the social studies department), encouragement when
I had a difficult student. By my tenth year I had a classroom in a
different wing of the building, but I still had visits from Mr. Taylor.
(I never called him Leslie.) When I began following the school's
baseball team, I found that he too was a fan, and we sat together at
many a game. He was the first person to greet me on our prep days in
August, and the last to say goodbye in June.
Mr. Taylor retired in 1983, the year that Ron and I were married. When
Lynn was born in 1985 he sent a note and a gift. When she was about six
months old I had her with me in a shopping center near his home. He
came over to say hello and asked almost apologetically if he could hold
her, conveying the sense that I would be doing him a great honor to let
him touch my child. When I retired he sent a note. We exchanged
greetings at Christmas, but I don't think I ever saw him again.
I was working my first season at the test-reading job when I saw his
obituary. It's awkward to ask for time off from a temporary job you've
just begun, but I arranged it anyway to attend his funeral. His sisters
had arranged a display of photographs and memorabilia, and through it I
saw a Mr. Taylor I hadn't known before. Dean (as his family called him)
had been a soldier in World War II, interrupting his education briefly
to volunteer. The pictures of him in his uniform, posed having fun with
his service buddies, reminded me of my father, another bookish
individual more suited for the life of the mind than for combat.
But the most remarkable thing was the display of Mr. Taylor's
notebooks. For years he'd kept
commonplace
books. He collected mostly inspirational and devotional material,
quotations urging diligence and perseverance, duty to God and country
and family. He read widely in Christian philosophy, keeping lists of
books to be acquired and annotations on the ones he dipped into. He had
transcribed much of the handwritten material into neatly typed sheaves,
categorized and cross-referenced.
I think of Mr. Taylor often. I have a crate full of twenty years of
notebooks. I, too, am an inveterate copier-outer, and now that we've
acquired a small photocopier, I also scan and paste passages into my
notebooks. A
new section of
my blog is intended to help me get all that stuff into a searchable
electronic format. I'm dedicating it to Mr. Taylor, and on this,
what
would have been his eighty-third birthday, I present a poem by
Leonard Cohen that seems apropos:
There Are Some Men
There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names to time.
Grave-markers are not high enough
or green,
and sons go far away
to lose the fist
their father's hand will always seem.
I had a friend:
he lived and died in mighty silence
and with dignity,
left no book, son, or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning-song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk,
fragrant, dark, and softly white
under the pale of mist.
I name this mountain after him.
— Leonard Cohen
