Thankfulness

It has always been my view that you should tell others when they are appreciated.  I know, I know, there are birthdays and annual gift-giving holidays, which make it easy to let slip past extending appreciation when it does not quite fit into one of these recognized occasions.

But this isn’t really a “gift,” rather, it is something inherently so heartfelt that it is on another plane, up on a higher plateau.  Remember your mother telling you, “Say please and thank you!”  Well, that is only the beginning.  Sometimes you can do this because the thought just came to mind, and you are in the exact right place and moment to do something good.  And that is what this is, something very good.  The interesting thing, often funny, is that the target of your appreciation is wholly unaware it is coming, thus making the moment all the more impactful.  But this shouldn’t be anything like a sneak attack of kindness, rather, it is an expression of gratefulness for something, to someone, who is important—to you.

Now take that feeling, a certain kind of wonderment, when you come to realize you knew this all along, but just hadn’t put the pieces together.  You want to go back and thank the person who so influenced you.  That would be a good feeling for them and you.  But what if you are too late?  What if the moment or the opportunity was missed and passed you by?  What then?  That would be a deep regret of your own inaction.  The real beauty of the thing is to have what we learned from these people live on in us, but still—thank them if you can.

* * *

Samson Freedman

This man, and his story, is the oldest vignette that caused me to write about this.  Without realizing it at the time, I had missed an opportunity.  

In 1959, at Morris E. Leeds Junior High School in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Mr. Samson Freedman was my seventh-grade homeroom teacher.  I was about the smallest kid in the school, with bright, satiny blond hair, and a timid nature that might have accompanied me throughout life.  

Mr. Freedman, with his first name, Samson, was anything but what the Bible story tells about his namesake.  He was of quite small stature, soft spoken, and very easy going.  

A dozen years later, I was in my last year of law school at Villanova when the news came out on February 1, 1971.  Mr. Freedman had been murdered by one of his students.  A young man had argued with my former teacher, went home, and brought back a gun.  He shot Mr. Freedman in the back of the head.  It was the first time a Philadelphia teacher was killed by a student in the city’s rough-hewn school system.

I had never missed or cut a class in all my years of elementary, junior high, high school, college or law school.  But a funeral for Mr. Freedman would take place down on Broad Street, a distance north of City Hall.

I took the P&W trolley from Villanova to 69th and Market, the Elevated to City Hall, then the subway north to the nearest intersection to the funeral home.  When I emerged into the sunlight there were masses of people all around me.  There seemed to be every teacher and administrator in the Philadelphia Public School system, and hundreds of Mr. Freedman’s old and younger students, all to honor a man worthy of praise.  I cannot recall how close I got to the door of the funeral parlor, but not as near as I wanted.  I milled with the crowd, all expressing the same sentiment, which did me some good, but not enough.

On the subway ride home, I saw a young fellow I recognized.  At age sixteen, I had been a Nature Counselor at the Philadelphia Council Boy Scout camps of Hart and Treasure Island.  Thousands of boys passed through the nature lodge, only some of whom were memorable, and this one was.  His name was Charlie Brown.  When our eyes met, there was an immediate mutual recognition.  He got up and came over to me, a smile on his face.  It was at least six years since we had seen each other.  The camps had only two weeks for each troop to attend and for the counselors and scouts to get to know each other.  

He extended his hand and said, “Wayne Nature!”  Each counselor used his first name and then his specialty as a last name.  There was Bob Campcraft and Tommy Archery, so I had become Wayne Nature.

But his smile said it all.  Then he began to spill out to me parts of the nature lectures I gave as I walked a dozen Scouts from his troop through trails in the woods.  The dogwood tree had pairs of leaves.  To help identify it, I would tell the Scouts, “Dogwood, dog ears,” and Charlie repeated these very words to me from the past.  He went on with the Judas Redbud tree with its heart-shaped leaves, and others.  How he could have remembered all of that, I could not fathom, but our parting, when the train came to his stop, was a good one.  In those days before computers and email, he was gone, and we both got on with our lives.

But the moment had struck me.  I sat back down on the subway, then on the El, and the P&W, all the while composing a piece about my late teacher, which became a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin.  They must have received hundreds, as the man was loved, and soon there would be a memorial to him, and scholarships awarded annually in his name, for years to come.  I was grieving and needed to pour out my thoughts onto paper.  

The Bulletin printed several letters, but mine was at the top of the page, the headliner for their Letters to the Editor.  It was the very first piece I ever had published.  For me, it was more than a eulogy.  It was thanking my old teacher for what he had done for me—but maybe a little too late.  Those words were solemn to me, but he should have heard them while he was still alive.

From the Philadelphia Bulletin, Letters to the Editor, 2/6/71:

William Snyder

Mr. Snyder was the Vice Principal at Germantown High School, what elsewhere might have been called the Dean of Men.  He was also an assistant coach on the Boys Gymnastics Team.  He wanted to make sure every boy could do a back handspring.  Even when I first arrived at Germantown, I was beyond that early step in gymnastics, so he helped me advance with more difficult moves.  

Gymnastics was a winter sport, and the practices were after school on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  A couple dozen boys worked hard and improved with the help of Mr. Snyder and the other coaches.  The swim team practiced Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.  I was in the freestyle relays, but more importantly, I was the lead springboard diver.  Each year I would place well in the city championship competitions, for gymnastics, on what was called the side horse, now the pommel horse, and for diving, on the one-meter springboard, a point of pride for the entire school.

I wouldn’t let any sport season go to waste.  In the fall, when the big boys were playing tackle football, I joined the soccer team.  I was one of the few American-born players trying to keep up with the Ukrainians, Italians, and Brits, who had played in their countries of birth from childhood.  It made me fight harder, but I learned much from great teammates with names like Peter Stenitksy, John Ramarchuk, and Charles Duccilli.  Charlie would go on to play soccer at Temple University, then into the early professional soccer leagues.  Later, he became a coach at Rutgers, then coached a pro team.  Needless to say, we had quite a talented bunch of boys on the Germantown Soccer Team.

 Then spring brought baseball for some, but the track team was 155 strong, and I simply had to do something.  For most of high school, I was far too small to keep up with long-legged track stars, but I made my name in the high jump.  After an ankle injury, I came back to pole vault, where physical size didn’t matter as much.  

In the middle year of high school, eleventh grade, I got involved in student government and was elected to the school’s governing body, the Committee of Ten.  For my senior year, I was elected as President of the Student Government, and we actually did things.

We refinished and revamped the dungeonlike cafeteria by sanding and shellacking all of the wooden tables dated back to 1914, and painted barber-poles on the massive support columns.  A vacant dumping lot across the street was an eyesore until I learned through land records that no one seemed to own it.  A couple of afternoons after school, with donated rakes, hoes, shovels, and wheelbarrows, a few dozen of my schoolmates and I cleared the place out.  We planted shrubs and flowers, extending our campus across the street.  I visited other high schools for their morning assemblies and gave speeches about what we were doing at Germantown, encouraging them to do the same.

All the while, Mr. Snyder was either there to assist, or right in the wings.  Often, he was the hidden hand when something questionable was needed.  He made a judgment call about securing donated paint and gardening equipment from hardware stores down on Germantown Avenue, something never done before.  Other teachers and administrators were involved, but Mr. Snyder was always close at hand.

During our Thursday afternoon high school football games, there were certain sections in the Germantown High stadium up in Mt. Airy that were filled with what might have been called malcontents.  Today they would simply be recognized as gang members, always ready for a fight.  They told the visiting football players and fans from Simon Gratz High, “We may not win the game, but we will win the fight!”  Even in 1964, that was a scary proposition.  But how to quell such a potential disaster?

Mr. Snyder, wearing his suit, overcoat and fedora, placed himself in the stands, right in the midst of so many of these boys with chips on their shoulders.  He was a persona that kept the place calm, cheering when appropriate, but never letting a punch be thrown or a knife to come out.  His mere presence among the gang leaders kept the whole place in control.  

On the evening of graduation in January 1965, I was pleased, but astonished, to have received a number of awards.  I will note that none was for my B+ grades, where those for scholarship went to the worthiest students who would attend the University of Pennsylvania, and others, to contribute to attending the colleges of their choice.  My awards were all for citizenship, community service, and “Boy of the Year,” as medals from the Union League of Philadelphia, the Daughters of the American Revolution, pen and pencil sets, and others.  I was actually shocked as I had not been aware that any of this would happen.  I can say I enjoyed every moment of every day of high school and look back on all of them as fond memories.

Right after the graduation ceremony, my family was among the mass of departing celebrants.  Mr. Snyder came through the crowd and approached my father, who he had never met before.  He asked if he could have a few minutes to speak with him.  Such a request during a normal school day might have meant a disciplinary matter, but not this time.

Quite surprised, my father willingly went with a man he had never seen before, off to the Vice Principal’s office.

In fifteen minutes, my father returned with a wholly new expression on his face.  He almost seemed dazed, maybe even in shock, but a good shock.  He looked at me differently than he had before, and I had no idea at the time what might have transpired.  He was silent about it.  He would only say he was glad he had gone with Mr. Snyder, and those were among the most important fifteen-minutes in his life.  

Back in the 1960s, high school students simply didn’t keep their parents informed about their activities, participating in sports or the many projects with student government.

I would only much later learn that Mr. Snyder knew more about me, and my life at Germantown High, than my father did.  He took the time and the opportunity to tell my father, literally, all of the stuff I had done while I was a student there.  At one point in the meeting, I think my father even felt he might have met a co-father to his son, the one who saw him in the daytime, not the one who was with him on nights and weekends.

Mr. Snyder went on about what my future would, or might, hold, if my high school track record was any indication.  That may have been a real eyeopener for my father, because parents don’t always perceive their child’s future in the way Mr. Snyder did, with his perspective of observing thousands of students for over twenty-five years.  It was only years and years later that my father even gave a hint about the graduation-evening conversation with the Vice Principal, likely, I now believe, because Mr. Snyder held him to a, “and please don’t ever tell him I said this,” admonition.  Another reason I think my father remained silent about this meeting is because I am pretty sure Mr. Snyder gave praise to him for having been the father who raised me as he did.

Now, all of these details about that time in my life, why set them out here?  Simple.  I never, as almost no one did at the time, went back to visit my old alma mater and see my old teachers and administrators.  I was off to college, then on to law school, served nearly three decades in the FBI, raised five children, and was living my life in distant places, but always with that same level of energy of which Mr. Snyder had been so observant.

When I was in my last year of law school at Villanova, an old friend told me that Mr. Snyder was in some sort of “old-folks home,” and his life was not seen as being very long into the future.  Even now, I can feel the twinge when I learned that.  But there was some project I had to finish, something-or-other that I needed to do, and I simply could not get away to visit Mr. Snyder.  

He would pass away, maybe knowing within his own soul that he had done well, regarding all of the above.  But it would have been something else to have had a personal visit, after all those years, for me to give him the lifelong feedback that it truly was so, to tell him I knew how much he had cared, I appreciated what he had done, and how he helped me become the man I am.  

From the Germantown High School newspaper, the Cliveden Clipper, 1/20/64:

Wayne’s Germantown athletic letter sweater for swim, gym, soccer, and track.

In 2015, we were putting together a 50-year reunion for Germantown High.  The school had been shut down and out of use, so there was no place to go back and visit.  

I was on the reunion committee to locate classmates who were on the hard-to-find list.  With the advent of computers and databases, decades after our graduation, and the assistance of another former FBI agent, we were able to find individuals who had been long off our reunion rolls.  They could now be aware of the upcoming event and attend for the first time in years.

One of them was Bruce Haggans, a tall fellow who I had been friends with in classes on the academic path to attend college.  I thought it would be great to surprise him, have a short conversation about our planned reunion, and get his address to send him the formal invitation.

From a national database, my colleague came up with a phone number in Menlo Park, CA, perhaps the farthest any of our classmates had moved from Philadelphia.

When the phone rang, it was a younger man’s voice, and I asked if I could speak with Bruce Haggans.  He said that was him.

I said he sounded a little too young to be the Bruce Haggans I was looking for, and he said, “You must mean my dad.”

I asked if his father was around, and if I could speak with him.  

After a moment of silence, he said his father had died just a few months ago.  

Then I was silent, and I think he realized why, even over the line.

I told him who I was, how I knew his father, and why I was calling.  I verified that his father was, indeed, the Bruce Haggans who had graduated from Germantown High in 1965.

After just a little more silence, I asked if his father ever talked about his times in high school.  The son told me he knew very little.  So, Bruce had been as quiet with his family as he had been with his classmates.

“Would you like to hear about your father?” I asked

I knew I had an eager listener, even if he was on the phone with someone he had never met, seen, or even heard of before.

I told him his father and I were friends fifty years ago.  Bruce would come to school wearing a long-sleeved, opened-collar, white dress shirt, something almost no one else did.  He was a good student, always neat and clean, but very quiet.

When seats were not assigned, he would always take a place by the tall classroom windows, which he seemed to enjoy with the light shining down.  When he did speak, he had a wry and understated wit, that meant to me he knew more of what was going on than he would let on.

He was on the football team, being taller than most of the other students.  I recalled his dark green jersey had the big white number 83 on it, and I remembered him catching passes.  That would have made him what today is called a “big tight end,” although he had very good blocking skills on right end of the offensive line.  He was on the baseball and track teams, too.  He had to have been very good at both spring sports for the two coaches to be willing to share his talent.  He was a decent guy, liked by all.

I gave his son my condolences, again.  He welled up, as though a hand had reached out from his father’s grave and patted him on the back. 

I was thankful for having had Bruce as a friend, all those years ago.  I missed that Bruce would not attend our reunion so we could talk and laugh about our teenage times.  But taking the rare opportunity to speak with his son is something Bruce would have been thankful for.  It was my pleasure to add some good karma to this world.

I placed Bruce on the “Deceased List,” and went on to the next hard-to-find classmate.  

Marilyn E. Froehlich

Mrs. Froehlich is the individual whose story made me realize there is a concept of Thankfulness that should be important in our lives.  It takes hindsight and perspective and a pinch of intellectual integrity to go back and figure that, besides your own gumption and drive, who else was out there, not just cheering us on, but helping us along the way?

Since retiring as a Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2000, I have written three books and over a hundred essays.  I have a readership that seems to appreciate them and keeps coming back for more.

So, not as a professional investigator, but now, as a professional writer, who is it who comes to mind when I think about how I got here?

I should have thought of this before, long ago, but sometimes the right concept doesn’t surface until it is almost too late.

After graduating from high school in January 1965, I started college at the local-to-Philadelphia campus of the Pennsylvania State University.  It was Penn State, Ogontz, later to be called the Abington Campus.

The instructor I recall best, my favorite English teacher, was Mrs. Froehlich.  It was not just English, but, more narrowly, a writing class.

The first day of class in the Sutherland Building, about fifteen students poured into the assigned room and plunked ourselves down in no particular order.  The teacher seemed to be late, and we were all conversing.  Some of us knew each other from high school, or our general neighborhoods, even if we had gone to different high schools.  Others, quickly became new acquaintances.  But no matter, for the topic of discussion quickly turned to Mrs. Froehlich, who was she, and what had we heard about her?  And, what the heck was she doing coming so late to the first class?

About fifteen minutes in, a girl on the edge of all of this stood up, gathered some folders in her arms, and walked to the front of the room.  She placed her armload on the table and looked up at a very surprised class.

“I am Mrs. Froehlich!” 

Wow!

Quickly, we all reviewed the last ten minutes and tried to recall if we had said anything derogatory, or that seemed off-putting as she sat there, a wolf among her sheep.  But, too late, any damage had already been done.

Mrs. Froehlich could not have been any more than just a few years older than her students, partly genetics and partly with her choice of clothing on that first day, not to appear professor-like.  Later, I would sit back and laugh, in fact we all would, about the one she had put over on us.  What a great ploy!

Then it came down to the nuts and bolts of learning how to write.  Granted, almost everyone knew, from various studies, how poorly high school graduates did when it came to stringing words together to form sentences.  It was her job to fix that.

One of the short stories I recall best was Ernest Hemmingway’s A Clean Well-Lighted Place.  Of the few works of his I had read, I had never even heard of this one, only a few pages long.  It is pretty dark, an old man in a Spanish bar drinking brandy, with two serving men, one much younger than the other.  The shroud over the story is that all is nothingness in the universe, seemingly great sadness with no positive future in sight.  This is actually the opposite of my own philosophy and psychological outlook, so I remembered it well.  Perhaps fittingly, it was a precursor to Hemmingway’s demise by his own hands some thirty years later.

There were stories from the sci-fi genre, either by Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein, the two best known in this field at the time. 

The others were all interesting but not picked for that reason.  Rather, it was that they made you think, and what they made you think.

There was an essay due almost every week, and Mrs. Froehlich was not teaching us the conventional or easy way to write an essay.

We were to write the rough draft as planned, but when we finished the conclusion, review it and figure a way so that summing up was converted into being the first paragraph.  It would make the opening paragraph much stronger, and say more.  Then, the follow-up paragraphs had to be more meaty, to support the new opening, and—get ready for it—at the end, you should come up with an even better conclusion than you had before, not just a summing up, but to make points that gradually could be drawn by the improved paragraphs two-through-four.  

Then you feel it come together.  It says what you want it to, and it is complete.  It is not just an essay you wrote, but something whole and substantial you could be proud of.  It is not about just the topic of the essay, but the depth to it.

She had us deep-thinking about each story and converting that through our brains, down our arms and into our writing fingers, so the strength and depth of the assigned essay could be better understood by our readers.  More importantly, there would be a conclusory reveal that was either what we understood the author’s true meaning to have been, or how we interpreted it, always supported by the middle paragraphs.

Once you had that figured out, now there was an essay worth writing, worth submitting, and if you did not get a good grade, it was something you discussed with Mrs. Froehlich.  She loved to have back-and-forths with her students.  I think she saw this as just another step in the writing process.  Students would take from that repartee, go back and improve their essays, resubmit them, with her permission, and often, earn the grade they thought they deserved, because by then, they actually did.

Mrs. Froehlich was wise beyond her years, even if she still sometimes looked like she could be sitting among us, from her appearance.

The final was a complete surprise to everyone.  It was not just another essay to analyze, but this was for all the marbles.  It was not to be composed at home, as all the earlier ones, but would be written right there in the classroom, over a couple of hours.

If a Martian should fly down to earth and discover a time capsule, and all that was inside were the several essays and short stories we had read during the school term, the question was, what would the visitor from another planet think of, and understand about, mankind here on Earth.

Yes, nothing like the essays over the last ten weeks but, in some ways, the same.  First, figure your ideas, and then begin a draft.  Knowing the Froehlich method, you will soon trash that introduction, then move on to the middle paragraphs.  At the conclusion, do your very best to make it conclusory, but also knowing it would be magically converted—a rabbit out of the top hat sort of stuff—and move it to the beginning of the paper. 

Now you have the hang of it and something meatier than you had before, with all of the strands of knowledge and information about those many stories over the last two months.  We had all read them carefully—they were pounded into our brains—and knew enough about them so they were just pieces of the puzzle to be taken and dropped into place to make our points.

Is man strong, or weak, assertive or reticent, down in the dumps or alive with spirit, and why, and, yes, yes, support those positions, because you will need them by the final second-effort conclusion.

I can say with veracity, that it was the beginning—for me, anyway—of the feeling of an essay coming together, as it was being written and then crossing a finish line with the wind at my back.  It was that satisfying.

Mrs. Froehlich laughed as she told me my final grade in the course was an A- - - -.  I am proud to say it was probably the hardest-fought-for, and earned, A in my college career.

After that school year, I went up to the main campus of Penn State and graduated in three years.  I immediately went on to Villanova Law, actually starting classes on the evening of the very same day I had graduated from college, Sunday, September 1, 1968.

I would never return to Ogontz, nor would I see Mrs. Froehlich again.  All the while, in college, but also law school, later passing two bar exams, New Jersey and California, then writing letterhead memorandums in the FBI, from debriefing Russian defectors, my skills would be honed further.  But the grist had come from my writing teacher in the first year of college.

So now, in my long pondering of who was out there, and who had done a lot to get me where I am, Mrs. Froehlich’s name jumped to the top of the page.  But how to find her?  Computers had been at least thirty-years off when I left Ogontz, and most databases didn’t track back very far before their daily entries, so many records were still in folders in file cabinets.  They were just as ancient and inaccessible as it sounds.

I did not know her first name, nor was I certain of the spelling of her last name, which I knew, coming from German, could have a few options for which letters it would include, and even the order of the letters.

I went back to my retired-FBI database partner and we tried various spellings, but not having a first name hindered the effort.  I could only guess her age as a few years older than my 73, but her appearance that first day of class made the possible span of years to cover at least a dozen.  

I figured that, even during a pandemic, someone at Penn State Abington might find an interest in my project.  I reached out with an email to Kimberly Eclipse, Administrative Support Coordinator in the Advising Center.  It contained a description of my project, but also why I was doing this.  It included a very mini-summary of the above, just enough for her to know I was not a wanton stalker.

I can now say she was very kind to me, but that would aptly describe all three of the Nittany Lionesses at PSU Abington who were good and thoughtful enough to spare some time to help.

Kimberly verified there was only one English teacher from near the era of my search, who had taught at Abington for an astonishing forty-seven years, way back to 1973!

Yet that was still six years after I had left, and I didn’t know how long Mrs. Froehlich had remained teaching on the campus.  That path led me to Dr. Ellen Andrews Knodt, Professor of English, who was as gracious as Kimberly had been, and even made a request of interim Chancellor Dr. Andrew August, who was in a position to speak with Human Resources.  But, alas, their records did not go back far enough, although everyone gave it their earnest efforts.

Good to their words to pursue this further, my request eventually landed on the desk if Mrs. Lillian Anne Hansberry, a librarian.  Importantly, she was the Coordinator for the Archive Room for the campus back to the 1950s when the institution had been the Ogontz School for Girls, (of which I later learned that Amelia Earhart was an alumna).  But there were still no formal archives for Penn State’s part going back to what I was looking for.

As a professional investigator, I will comment that this was not frustrating.  It was like any detailed investigation where one walks up a stream, turning over rocks, one at a time, until you find what you are looking for, or, in the alternative, it might not be there at all.  But there were more rocks ahead.

Mrs. Hansberry finally came up with a graduation list from 1962 where “Marilyn E. Froehlich” had been an English instructor.  A-ha!  Finally, an accurate name to search for in a comprehensive proprietary database. 

And there, finally, was Marilyn A. Froehlich, living in Pittsburgh, PA, now 83 years old and affiliated with Carlow College, just down the street from Carnegie Mellon.  There might have been an issue with the middle initial, but women marry and divorce, and any time spent before a judge, you can change your name.

I prepared my notes on my computer and called her number.

Marilyn Froehlich answered the phone, but she was not the Marilyn Froehlich I had been looking for.  She had taught elementary education at Montessori schools for decades, but never at Penn State.  

Could there be two Marilyn Froehlichs in Pennsylvania, around age 83, and this was not the one I wanted to locate?  It seemed so.

I spoke as kindly as I could, not with penetrating questions, but to verify more about her, and if she might have a female family member who was the lady I sought. Much to my surprise, I learned she was a Sister of Mercy—a nun—for decades. So, no, a great lead, but a dead end.

There are various ways to ping the comprehensive databases, so I went back to my equally disappointed colleague for one more college try. I suggested that if she might have remarried, her middle name might now be Froehlich, which would be a different way to enter the data, possibly bringing different results.

After several unsuccessful efforts, he finally found a Marilyn E. Froehlich, who reportedly died at age 84 on 1/2/20, just six months before.  But with our track record with databases, this required clarifying phone calls to see who was behind the phone numbers.  All were area codes 215 or 610, so she was in the greater Philadelphia area.

The ones for Marilyn rang with no one answering, and the calls were made early evening, when one might be expected to be up and able to respond.  I was really hoping to get something definitive that night, so I looked among the other names from the database under first and second-degree relatives.  

Several had different last names, but then I saw Kristen H. Froehlich, age 57. She would be my best educated guess to be the person to get me where I wanted to be. 

I called the number and a woman’s voice answered right away.

I asked if she was Kristen Froehlich and she was very hesitant.  She asked who was calling, with the implication of—and what do you want?  So, I got right to it.

I told her my name and that I had Mrs. Froehlich for English at Penn State, Ogontz, in 1966.  I was trying to locate her.  I was hoping she might be the daughter of my old teacher.  

I thought that explained a lot, but she seemed to need more.  I told her that after I had her mother—if she was her mother—I finished Penn State, went to Villanova Law, and then spent 29-years in the FBI.  I had written books and scores of essays and wanted to find the first and best teacher I ever had who had taught me how to write.  I wanted to thank her, after all these years.

On the other end of the line I could hear some quick sobs and pictured tears.

She told me that after Penn State, her mother had taught at Temple University, but was always an English teacher.

I had to ask if she was there or—what?

She volunteered that her mother had passed away in January.  Inwardly, I lamented that after 54 years, I had missed another one by just six months.  Thoughts of Bruce Haggans and his son came immediately to mind.  I had done this before.

I asked Kristen if she would like to hear about her mother in her early years of teaching, and I think it came as a shock.  She would have been around three-years old at the time.

Out of the clear blue, here was a man on the phone, not a stalker or identify thief, but someone who wanted nothing from her, and was willing to volunteer things about her mother that she had never known. 

So we talked for a few minutes more.  I told her about the classic move of sitting among her new students on the first day of class, then finally revealing herself.  Kristen laughed and said that sounded just like her mother.

I didn’t have to extoll the virtues of how well she had taught, and taught me, because the reason I thought to make this call in the first place was because she had done her job, and more, and loved doing it.  If I was any example of what she produced in all those hundreds and hundreds of essay-writing students over decades, then she should be very proud of her mother.

In the end, I thanked her for her time and gave her my heartfelt condolences on her mother’s passing.  Just as with Bruce Haggans’s son, speaking to a child of the one sought is actually more than the next best thing.  If Mrs. Froehlich were looking down from above, I know she would not want to be the one to hear praise for herself.  Rather, her daughter, hearing from someone else—with a completely independent perspective—that her mother was a good soul, had done more than her best by me.  A stranger for over five decades, I thought enough of her mother to try to find her, at one point, a seemingly impossible task, which had finally come to a conclusion.  

For Kristin Froehlich, I believed it was a good one, a visitor come from nowhere, to give her some solace on the passing of someone who was not just her hero, but a hero to many others, wherever the winds had blown them.

If there is any wisdom that comes with age, we need to apply it as best we can, and pass it on to others.  Their roads may be no less difficult, but teachers, mentors, as Mr. Freedman, Mr. Snyder, and Mrs. Froehlich, lessons learned from them will be tutoring and guiding us our entire lives.  At some point, we owe it to them to go back and tell them they were appreciated and—see, here, part of me, a good part, is what you helped make!

If they are no longer around, but there are offspring who will benefit from that same conversation, directed in a little different way, that is a righteous and gracious thing to do.  More than that, it is something we should all do, show thankfulness to those who touched us.

Plantation, FL

August 14, 2020