47 All dead

Los Gatos High School

 

 Of course they are all dead now, the teachers I had crushes on in high school.

After writing yesterday's post I searched for my old Latin prof and found that he had accepted cancer's final invitation in 2012 at the age of 81.  The two other teachers I loved with my crazed high school passion, Mr. Ridgely and Mr. Glasner, are also gone.

Mr. Ridgely was an English teacher of no great good looks.  About fifty, balding and pot bellied, he was fierce, funny and demanding.  In a senior year English class he had us read and think about Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.  One of our paper writing options was to compare it to the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth.  I think about that now.  Why invite students into existentialist angst when they are seniors in high school?  Or did he think we were there already and that he was simply giving us tools for expressing our languors with greater creativity?  My crush on him developed in part because one day after class he showed me some of his own poetry.  I felt like he was interested in me personally.

I feel mildly embarrassed even now at how transparently needy I was then.  Perhaps that's why I've not been able to have close relationships with students.  It always seems so fraught.

That neediness also drove my crush on Mr. Glasner.  He directed the senior play and oversaw the drama department at Los Gatos High.  He was also well known as an actor in local theatrical circles.  I took an acting class from him and under his direction played Helena in the senior play, Midsummer Night's Dream.  He had a flamboyant personality at a time when such a vibrancy made what we now call "affectional preference" questionable.  He was married, of course, but with those he trusted his conversation carried hints to sparkle a Bay Area kid's suburban gaydar.  Heck, our senior year variety show contained numbers from Cabaret and Gypsy (including "You Gotta Get a Gimmick!")  And I certainly owe him for introducing me to grand opera.  One day as some of us theater kids were hanging out in the auditorium at lunch time, he played the drinking song and "Sempra Libera" from La Traviata.  I have loved opera ever since.

I met with all three men occasionally in the years after high school.  While I was happy to be gone from my parent's house, I missed my town and teachers for a long time after I left.  But I have seen none of them for over 30 years.  Mr. Ridgely died in 2011.  His obituary is still up at the Mercury News obit site.  As for Mr. Glasner -- I found only a "death record" for a Joseph Glasner in Sunnyvale in 2005 that was roughly the correct age.  But I was also told of rumors of his death back in 2011 at our 40th Reunion.

While googling these men, I made the sort of startling discovery once reserved for folks mucking about in library stacks.  I found out that I actually saw Mr. Glasner for the first time in 1963 when I was in fifth grade.  My folks took me to a performance of Comedy of Errors at the Lifeboat Theatre in Santa Clara.  A quick search for Joseph Glasner in Newspapers.com showed me story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel noting that he was the Antipholous in that production!  So I first saw him when I saw my first full Shakespeare play!

And it was Mr. Glasner who cursed me with the words, spoken one day outside of our auditorium, "I promise you, you were born to be a teacher!"

And now he is gone, and Ridgely is gone, and most lately Mr. Barrans is gone.  All, all are gone, these men who were so important to my younger self. 

Professor Google allowed me to find a copy of one of the saddest short films ever made which suits my mood just fine.  This is  "Valse Triste" from Allegro Non Troppo.