You may wonder why I chose that title. I was drawing a blank while listening to Wagner before my string of Chinese classes that I cover and monitor and I thought of Richard Ryan, my English teacher from high school. He was there from before my freshman year so we all knew of him and that he would be our teacher in junior year. He was the one everyone dreaded and then he becomes the one that stayed with me and now I consider a close friend, even 700 mikes away. He was tough and demanding in the old school style. His famous quotes were: “you will not leave my class until you can read and write”, “life is not fair, just fairer than death”, and his favorite, ” you danced to the music, now it is time to pay the piper”. In many ways he was my Mister Holland. I survived his class and with the prospect of Miss Krumm, who was even more dreaded, I was happy to have him in senior year and did a lot better. All his wanted was us to be able to think 3 dimensionally and to be able to express ourselves intelligently. After all these years, my only suggestion was to give us more of a historical perspective about the times of the literature that we were learning to give us context. Beowulf with 1979 mentality was torture and referencing more Tudor and Stewart England would have helped with Shakespeare.
He is now a successful author of Sherlock Holmes’s novels and as have I told him, the tables have turned and it is I who critiques his work. I enjoy his novels tremendously and I was even an inspiration for a very minor character in one of his earlier novels. I have been pressing him to write a story where I am featured as a bigger character and time will tell. So why I am writing this piece about a teacher from four decades ago? Simple: if one can influence somebody and forty years later that person writes favorably about him, then that person has been a tremendous success. He is also the one person who gets all my historical laced referenced jokes and other sarcastic remarks I come out with.
I am turning 57 Sunday and it amazes me how young my teachers were back then. I miss Celine Carr, my Biology teacher who is no longer with us, as well and Carl Leach, the music teacher and our musical director, who died a few years after graduation.
Now Mr. Ryan is retired and had been married over 40 years to his wife Gracie which shows he must have not been such a son of a bitch after all. When I write these pieces he is in my head with regard to the use of a phrase, or what correct grammar to use. He taught me to appreciate Shakespeare as a guy who wrote some really funny stuff as well as the heavy Macbeth themes. I have done some editing for a friend while down here who advocate for children and those abused by a sometimes corrupt legal system down in Dixie. I won’t elaborate further but the point is, what I learned in his classes carried over to a year as the baseball reporter for my college paper and the rest of my life of writing in general.
To sum up, thank you Rich and just know that you made a difference in hundreds or even thousands of lives and coming into teaching so late, I can never come close to accomplishment. I love the kids here and one class is the my “Dead Poets Society” class; good kids with distinct personalities and a lifetime of learning still ahead. What I have been told, the kids like me even when I am not doling out little treats at the end of the day. Well the galloping hoards awaits.
John Scarso
Hilton Head Island Middle School
12/1/20
Yankee in Dixie 