Robert Simpson: Life-altering teacher

Teacher Appreciation Week, the first week of May, almost went past me unnoticed, the way the lasting impact of a really great teacher may escape your attention until years have passed. Every one of my teachers added something positive to my development, some more than others, but one in particular had such a dramatic impact on my future that she stands on a special pedestal in my memory.

Fresh out of college, just a few years older than I, she came into my life at the beginning of my final year in high school. A small bundle of energy, Phi Beta Kappa, with a major in both math and English, she would be my geometry teacher and also the adviser to the staff of the school newspaper, of which I was editor. I normally hated anything to do with math, but I came to love geometry. I think she could have taught me brain surgery.

For reasons that escaped me then and puzzle me still today, this new teacher decided early on that I was to be her protégé, her special project. I had always, in a vague and unfocused way, thought I’d like to go to college some day, but my family had absolutely no money to help me, and vast student loan programs such as exist today were unheard of then. But my mentor told me that not only must I go to college, I was to go to her college, Wake Forest, and she set to work making it happen. “Audit my advanced algebra class,” she told me, “not for credit, but I’ll grade your work. It’ll help you in college.” I hated algebra most of all. I was amazed to find that, with her as my teacher, algebra suddenly made sense.

This dynamo learned that her alma mater was, for the first time ever, offering twenty honors scholarships on a competitive basis. She got me entered in the competition and then worked, on her own time, to prepare me. She took a kid who’d been accustomed to coasting through most subjects with minimum effort, and began honing him into a serious student. When I passed the first stage of the competition, she accompanied me to her college for the faculty interviews that clinched the deal and garnered a scholarship that paid my first year’s tuition. Then, back home, she pulled whatever strings she could find to set me up for a small local loan and to get me hired for a summer job before college. Having wound me up and set me on a new path, she then left for graduate school, after which she would become a guidance counselor.

I visited her once when I was in the middle of my freshman year at Wake Forest and she was immersed in graduate studies at the University of North Carolina. Our visit was pleasant though brief. I had not yet recognized the extent of her impact on my life, so I don’t recall that I offered more than perfunctory thanks for how she had helped me. We said goodbye on a gray and chilly Sunday afternoon on the steps of the main library at UNC-Chapel Hill sixty-three years ago, and I never saw her again.

Only much later did I come to realize, with growing astonishment, what had happened. Other than my parents and my wife, I can think of no one who has affected my life so significantly as this young first-year teacher did. Without her intervention, I likely would never have gone to college at all, and certainly not to the one she chose for me. I would probably not have made the Army a career, a choice she, incidentally, would not have cared for, as her plan was for me to become a journalist. I would very likely never have set foot in Columbus, married a Columbus lady, had the family I had, and lived a life that was rewarding far beyond my youthful expectations.

I’m glad to say that I contacted this amazing teacher again some years ago and thanked her at length, although still not sufficiently, for all she did for me. Over many years as a guidance counselor, there’s no doubt she had a positive effect on many young people. If she changed the course of other lives as thoroughly as she did mine, she deserves not just belated thanks, but a special seat in that section of heaven reserved for the very best teachers ever.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 6:41 PM with the headline "Robert Simpson: Life-altering teacher."