My little remembrance of my years in Middlebury first appeared on the Web in 1997. I included the entire class lists (laboriously copied from the Heritage yearbooks which are still on a shelf in my office) in the hope that what has become known as the "vanity Google"--entering your own name into a search engine--might, in time, lead a few former students to get in touch.

The first to stumble on the Heritage Survivors Network and 'report in' in was Jody Miller ('87), with Bruce Smucker and Joel Carlin close on his heels. By the end of the year the number had grown to 8, and a steady trickle of new contacts continued to appear in the succeeding years. I created an e-mail folder for Heritage mail, and set up a filter to pluck the Hoosier wheat from the Internet chaff. (I was learning that having an "open" e-mail address on your web page is a good way to attract a lot of junk mail--and spam-blocking technology was only in its infancy.) I considered this important mail. I didn't want to miss any of it, and I tried to reply promptly. (Well, more promptly than average for me, anyway, as the demands of family and career waxed and waned. I fell behind on my e-mail about three days after I got my first e-mail address, and it doesn't look like I'm ever going to catch up.)

But somewhere along the road, the wheels came off. Most of you who wrote to me in the last few years got the autoreply, and then silence. The reason is painfully simple: in the wake of my father's death in 2000, I slid into an increasingly deep depression. Without quite realizing what I was doing or why, I started pulling back from people, from any situation which might test an increasingly fragile equilibrium. The game is known as Everything's Fine, Really--but in truth I was desperately trying to steer for the calmest waters in a boat that was riding so low that not much of a wave would be needed to swamp it.

If that sounds like an unsustainable strategy, well, it is. Thank goodness.

This week, nine months after an intervention which gave me a chance to start pulling things back together, I sat down with my laptop to read 42 letters that had gone neglected for too long. Wonderful letters all, full of wonderful stories from former studentswho are living wonderfully complex, gloriously human lives.

The arcs of those lives have been as surprising and unpredictable to you, their owners, as they are to me, whose path crossed with yours for a brief time a long time ago. Thank you for sharing them with me. I wish I had been able to allow these good feelings inside sooner, not least because the short half-life of e-mail addresses means some of the individual replies I'll be writing will not find you. Against the likelihood of that, I want to say this much publicly:

I have had many good teachers, and a few very special ones. I remember Miss Richards, Mrs. Coyle, and most of all Mr. Bowman as teachers who showed me the way to precious pieces of myself, to interests and ideas and sensibilities that have become so woven into who I am that I would not be the same person without them.

That any of you took the time to get in touch with me is gratifying. That some of you said to me the sort of things which I would have said to Mr. Bowman given the chance is humbling. It's surprisingly easy for a teacher to wonder if they've made any difference at all--to come to believe that everything they do is ephemeral, like building sand castles in the face of a rising tide. So your kind words and remembrances mean a great deal.

But most gratifying of all is the thought that so many of you are even now passing that gift on your children and, yes, even to your students

Pay it forward.

I do believe that we fnd the teachers we need--in or out of a classroom--when we are ready to learn.

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Created: 09 March 2007
Last Revised: 04 March 2014 07:43 AM