Sophie and Sadie's Scholarly Site

Father’s Day is always bittersweet for me. Bitter because my father, Don, passed away in June 2005 after a difficult four-month long battle with Stage 4 renal cancer. But Father’s Day is still  much more sweet than bitter to me because the times prior to that experience were times of great joy.

My father Don was a PE teacher and a  track and field and football coach. My father was not the typical bumbling jock-turned-coach portrayed in so many TV sitcoms and movies. My father was quick to point he was a graduate of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. For people who do not understand,  NC is home to several prestigious universities: Duke, Chapel Hill ( University of North Carolina), and Wake Forest that have long both long traditions in the sport of basketball but in "educational excellence like an Ivy League of the South". ( Can you tell T have indoctrinated on this point?)

I am a teacher because of my Daddy. I have never seen someone who loved their work more. I have never seen someone who loved “the kids” as he called them more,  and this is a man who dealt daily with all the heartache and drama that goes with teaching adolescents. I have never seen anyone before or or since that worked so hard to change people’s lives so much  as he did with his caring attitude that went well beyond any field or classroom, well beyond any points on a scoreboard or grades in a book.    I don’t dare  call what Daddy did a  job. For Daddy, teaching was truly a life’s work. I admired that and aspire to that.

When I was 17, I was accepted to Clemson University’s elementary education program. While I was still in high school, several well-meaning folks told me what a waste it was for me to go into teaching. I heard comments like how little of my brain I would use. I heard what the condition was of schools and education in our county. ( This was 1981 so things weren’t so great back then either). I heard the pay was low, the hours were long, and the job was unappreciated, and I was making a grave mistake.

I can still remember the conversation when Daddy sat me down, and we discussed my future and the choice I had made in a major. He told me that I had chosen a noble profession- “as noble as a decision to go into the clergy”. ( This is the way the man talked so I warned you he was no dumb jock, and for those of you who knew him well, you know how he could be quite eloquent  when called upon to speak or write). Daddy went on to explain to me that teaching was a calling and “not all are called to do this great work.”

At 17, you cannot appreciate  nor fathom the life that lies ahead and how choices then will set your life on certain paths. While I listened intently to what  he was saying, it took several years before I realized the complexity of what he was saying to me. Thirty years later, and those words have an even greater meaning.
In laymen’s terms, what Daddy told me is this: Teaching is not for everybody. For many people, this is their Plan B. Some people who choose teaching don’t know any teachers,  have no idea what they are getting into, and know less of the nature of children, and worst of all, don't care. They don’t realize that teaching has it’s  tremendous highs but  also  crushing lows.

I learned how to be a teacher from watching my father live his life.From my father, I learned the each day I’m given a gift: a new day, a clean slate, a chance to start over.  I wondered when I was 17 why he made a point to tell me this pearl of wisdom: If you have a bad  day in teaching, tomorrow you get to start all over again and try again because  kids have that kind of forgiving nature.

The trying again is something I watched in my father as he fought cancer. I have often told people that we never had our “Tuesdays with Morrie” experience when he came home to die. He never accepted that cancer would defeat him.Until his last breath, he fought to live. He never gave up.

But that is how he lived his life. He never gave up. The worst kids were the ones he seemed to take under his wings and find something of worth in. The kids who often stood back in the shadows, those who were ignored or ridiculed and unloved were the very ones he turned into stars. The ones who were often so broken by life’s defeats were the very ones that he grew to love most, and like so many stray animals that he took in, they  were “adopted” and brought into my family as my brothers and sisters.

From my father I learned about leaving a legacy as a teacher, a mentor, and a friend.


The best example of what my father taught the kids he taught and coached is summed up in the article from The State Newspaper( Columbia, SC):