16 Teacher

At sixteen, for the first time I called myself a pacifist, I don't know why. I had absolutely no understanding of the full ramifications of what I was saying. In high school I had exceptional teachers, Mr. Gorman for Latin and Mr. Remmes for American history, to name only two, and by their fine personal example they showed me an alternative to the models presented by the local coaches, ministers, farmers, laborers, clerks, retailers, and mechanics like my father and most of his friends.

Remmes was incomparable, peerless, to my mind without a doubt the greatest teacher in the history of Shenandoah High School. I met him first when I was a sophomore. We exchanged greetings but didn't talk. Sandy Overbey, two grades ahead of me, was in American History and basically just wanted me to take a look at this guy Mr. Remmes who in a year or two had taken the school by storm. What went on in his classes eventually became for me the most important academic news of every academic day. Good-looking, athletic, and slender with thinning blond hair and piercing blue eyes that fixed you in a glance and held it, he paced up and down in front of the class, thinking out loud to himself about war, slavery, revolution, economics, government, and religion, Catholicism specifically and without apology. Mr. R.W. Remmes exuded academic competition. He was arrogant, a word he relished just pronouncing and applied often to himself, supremely confident, even egotistical, proud of it, and he dared censure, defying authority every day it seemed, promoting mind, reason, tolerance, awareness, intellectual conversation. He loved language, he loved talking, he loved words. I remember he loved especially the words "bedlam," "chaos," "anarchy," "nihilism," the words "god," "angel," "intellect," the words "creation" and "procreation." I remember vividly a time he digressed at length to explain what he considered the important distinction between the words "immoral" and "amoral." He liked pronouncing words, he like pronouncing, period. Mr. Remmes had an unusual, curious, brilliant, restless, searching mind, a resonant voice—and principles. He wanted us to be skeptical, curious, smart, brave, and good.

After reading an abridgement of Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott and writing an English class book report for extra credit, I thought I was unexpectedly prepared when Mr. Remmes, disgusted with the level of reading by his own students in his history and economics classes, interrupted his lecture.

"I'll give an A to the person who last read a great book," he offered.

I raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"Ivanhoe."

Remmes thought for only a second.

"No, that's not a great book," he ruled.

Each day he walked about the front of the room, stopping to direct a question or coming down an aisle to get in someone's face. I saw no films in his classes. There were no nonacademic amusements or study periods. We were there to listen, to think, to ask and to answer questions, and to take tests. Often he began class with remarks on current events. He read aloud from news magazines, and he paced about the room, engaging our attention by looking directly into our eyes and asking a question about right and wrong, good and evil, faith in god, ethics, world affairs, or sex. He didn't try to be an entertainer either. He did not titillate or sensationalize. Nor did discussion ever descend to gossip and bs. He simply wouldn't let it. Remmes was no character, no eccentric. A single man in his early thirties, he told us boys that his weaknesses were women and drink, but around students his conduct was impeccable and circumspect. He ran a tight ship and let no one get out of line.

Fascinated, I did not simply admire the man.

I loved him.

In the late afternoon Mr. Remmes would sometimes have dinner at Berning's Cafe and, if friends and I didn't have sports, he might invite three or four of us to join him in the large corner booth where class and conversation would resume until the waitress brought him his coffee and then his dinner. One afternoon four of my friends and I were present at Mr. Remmes' table when he confronted a chemistry teacher who had asked if he might sit down and join us, a young man in just his first year of teaching who had been buying some of us boys liquor for our weekend parties. Smiling, he had only just sat down when Remmes stopped and fixed the young man's eyes with his own icy stare and sternly stated:

"I hope what I've heard isn't true and you're not buying booze for these kids!"

Exposed.

"No," the man lied. "I'm not."

Exposed.

Silent, Remmes just stared.

Exposed.

The younger man melted and shriveled to nothing right before our eyes.

Oz.

I was astonished.

Awed.

Mr. Remmes was my inspiration, the first true intellectual I had ever witnessed.

Thinker.

The reason I became a teacher.

My idol.