Seven Scribbled Words

I will never forget Mrs. Cowden, Mr. Galba, or Mr. Fred. I find myself remembering, during Teacher Appreciation Week, these three teachers and the indelible mark they made upon my life. 

Decades ago, I nervously walked into a one-room country school in rural Iowa, not yet able to read Mrs. Cowden’s name, printed neatly on the blackboard. Mrs. Cowden arranged us, her twenty-something students - aged five through fourteen - into rows next to a wood stove that would warm us throughout the cold months ahead. Feeding logs into the potbelly of that stove, Mrs. Cowden introduced me to reading, the magic that turns letters into stories. I read insatiably. And, when a dog attacked me in the schoolyard, ripping open my jaw near my jugular vein, Mrs. Cowden spun her car on the gravel road into town—not knowing if we would arrive before I bled to death.

Years later, with a life-long scar from that incident, I found myself in Mr. Galba’s science class. Mr. Galba fanned my curiosity about outer space, the earth, and on one particularly engaging afternoon, electricity. Touching a Van de Graaff electrostatic generator, the hair on my head defied gravity and rose into the air. Mr. Galba explained electricity and, more importantly, how to avoid being electrocuted. A year later, his lesson flashed through my mind as my baby sister, paralyzed by an electrical current coursing through her body, dangled from a metal door handle. Remembering Mr. Galba’s lesson, I was able to save her without electrocuting myself.

I wrote about saving my baby sister for a high-school English assignment. Mr. Fred, a firm proponent of the Oxford comma, gave me an A and scribbled seven words, in red ink, across the left-hand margin of my paper: You have a real talent for writing! It’s amazing what encouragement can do. Mr. Fred opened a floodgate. Not only could I read stories, I dared to dream I might write them, too. Mr. Fred’s seven scribbled words took up residence in my psyche. 

Teachers can do that—take up residence in the psyche. According to historian Henry Adams, they can also affect eternity because no one knows where a teacher’s influence stops. It seems apropos, during Teacher Appreciation Week, to pay tribute to all teachers, but most especially to the three faithful, unassuming teachers who, unknowingly, helped chart the course of my life.

Learn more about Terry in the May 19, 2022 Coastal Breeze News e-edition archives! “Local Author Wins 2022 Nautilus Book Award.”