‘Of all the teachers I had over the years . . .’
Your daily Letter to to the Columnist — Feb. 19, 2013
Dan,
I really enjoyed your column today. You had a great tour guide. Ms. Chubb (as I knew her in the ’70s) is a great lady. She certainly practices what she preaches. I learned a great deal from her when she taught me 6th grade at Wasena.
I learned things that went beyond academics, such as respect and tolerance. I had the pleasure of getting to know her better when I returned to Roanoke after college. Even after she told me to call her “Mignon,” I called her “Mrs. Chubb-Hale” out of respect. Of all the teachers I’ve had over the years, she’s the one I remember most fondly and most often.
I’ve been reading your stuff online since I moved to Richmond. I like a lot of what you write and agree with a number of the positions you’ve taken, but have never been inspired to comment. Obviously, this article inspired me.
Thank you for the history lesson. I’m making my kids read it tonight.
Al Wilson
RICHMOND
February 19, 2013 - 1:30 PM
It is so nice to see people respect a community leader.
I had many great teachers from elementary to high school and in college. The one who did the most good however, was Dick Hutchison. Mr. Hutchison was my high school guidance counselor as a senior in high school.
You see as a high school student I had two basic goals. First, was to stay eligible for whatever sport was in season. Second, was to keep my parents off my back because of bad grades. As a result, I coasted thru high school doing solid C+ work. When Mr. Hutchison became my counselor during my senior year he called me in for a talk. It turned out to be a talk I really didn’t want to hear. When I went in I thought we would be discussing which college I was interested in attending. Instead, Mr. Hutchison basically told me that based upon my work to that point, in his view, I wasn’t college material and that we should be talking about which branch of the service I planned to enlist in. By the way, in those days if your high school guidance counselor didn’t write a letter of reference for you, you weren’t getting in many colleges. You also need to remember that in those days there was a draft for young, able bodied men. Also, there was this little thing going on called Vietnam. Mr. Hutchison went on that day and reassured me that I had great intellectual talents, but that I had pretty much wasted them in high school.
So, you might ask, why is Mr. Hutchison the one educator who did the most good for me in school? Because he told me I had great gifts, but that I was wasting them. He explained clearly what my options were because of how I had approached high school. In essence, he explained what my life was going to be like if I didn’t change my behavior.
Honorable as military service was and is, it wasn’t what I had planned for my life. Fortunately there was a junior college in my hometown that took mercy on me and let me in. It was there that I began to discover the intellectual gifts I’d been blessed with and learned how to develop and use them.
30 years after I graduated from high school and during my first college presidency my high school honored me as one of its distinguished alums. I was dumfounded when the letter came from the current high school principal notifying me of the honor. I called the principal and asked if Mr. Hutchison was still living. He said he was. I indicated that I would return home for the ceremony and accept the honor only if Mr. Hutchison was present and the high school honored him for his service to generations of students who had attended the school. While he was reluctant he agreed.
Mr. Hutchison & I had a great conversation on the day of the ceremony. I thanked him for setting me on the right path those many years before.