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By Gerard T. Brooker, Ed.D.
Chuck was in my high-school English honors class. He was a writer of great promise. So, when he told me he had been accepted into the journalism program at the University of Missouri, I wasn't surprised.
During his freshman year at college, Chuck stopped by school a few times to keep me posted on his progress. We reminisced about our work together several years before. We had developed public service radio commercials to raise money for twenty-three sick and abandoned Cambodian babies who were being cared for by a nurse friend of mine in Thailand, a place far away yet close to our hearts. Chuck was instrumental by helping to raise several thousand dollars. It was an activity that in some ways transformed our formal relationship into a friendship. Whenever we got together on his visits, my spirits were always buoyed as he was filled with the joy of life.
In his sophomore year, it was discovered Chuck had lung cancer and had only a short while to live. So he left school to come home to be near his loved ones.
I went to see him one day, and in that mysterious way that some seriously ill people have, he reached into a deep place of his rich humanity and made us laugh for most of the afternoon. As I left him and hugged him good-bye, I felt confused and angry. There seemed to be no sense in what was happening.
About six weeks later, Chuck died. It was a great loss for everyone, especially for his family. The youngest of nine children, Chuck was talented and full of promise. More importantly, he was a good and decent person, a just man.
When I went to his funeral, his father asked to speak with me. He took me aside and told me that several weeks before, Chuck had asked him to go over his possessions and memorabilia with him so that he might select a few things to be buried in the coffin with him. He told me how bittersweet the assignment was. How his heart, the heart of a father, nearly burst with love and sadness. In the end, Chuck chose six items, including an essay he had written in my class some years before.
He told me that Chuck had always kept the piece because he liked the message I had written to him at the bottom of the last page. In that little note, I affirmed his talent as a writer and I urged him to be responsible for the gift, to be committed to it as something special. That encouraging postscript would now go with Chuck across the great divide.
I was touched and grateful for the extraordinary gift Chuck gave me that day. His wonderful gesture gave the teacher in me a vital insight, one that would change my life. His taking my reassuring note with him into eternity offered me a tremendous opportunity for impacting students' lives. I felt reenergized with a sense of purpose that was greater than ever.
Whenever I forget my purpose, I think of Chuck, and I am reminded of it once again: Teachers have the power to affect hearts and minds for a long time. Some would even say for eternity.
Marilyn L. Ali
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