better late than never i was introduced to the late great frank mccourt during a string of obituaries and recorded interviews that ran on the radio last monday night. i was tempted to head out to the bookstore that night to buy 'angela's ashes' but opted to wait until friday when i finished the other book i was reading.
i picked it up on the way to the f train and when we came out of the tunnel in brooklyn a woman leaned across the train aisle and asked if i had had mccourt for a teacher. i said no had she? and she had - as an english teacher in 10th and 11th grade. she went on to make some small talk and worried that she had wasted time in his class but she left me to my reading adding. 'they say his memoir [angela's ashes] is made up - that a child could never recall all those facts. but i saw him twenty years after i had left his classroom and he asked how both of my parents were by name and even remembered the street i lived on. the facts in that book are not made up."
i'm loving lunch and train commutes with the memoir - a terrific work. thanks to my train friend i have a trust for the book i may not have had otherwise. but my biggest take away from our conversation was the impact that a single english teacher can have on a student. i too wasted away so much of my english classes (in 2001 i actually felt compelled to write my old teacher mrs. h to say that i had finally learned to enjoy reading/studying). most of all i thought of my wife lori.
(pictured: lori and class at the gates opening, 2004. lori second from right. the girl next to her still stops to chat with us when we see her on 5th ave.)
lori is currently wrestling with a phd dissertation, a draft of which has already won the praise of her adviser. she's already feeling the pressure to aim for the stars and land a gig in an academy of 'higher learning'. but she's a damn good high school english teacher.
frank mccourt wrote a some great works but the greatest work he spoke of when interviewed were his students. we live near lori's school so run ins with grads are frequent. i guess this is a blog post to say how much it means to them/us/me to have her in the classroom.
