The Last Time I Saw My 6th Grade Teacher

Memory is a funny thing. It fades over time. Events blend together like an impressionistic painting. Certain events will stand out, but as you get older even those will drift out of focus and become fuzzy. You might remember your middle school teachers names - maybe, but in a few decades you will have very few clear memories of us. 

That is unless, you have a teacher who really makes a super-strong and long-lasting impression. That middle school teacher for me was Fred Hone. He was my 6th grade teacher.

He looked a little like Jug Head from the Archie comics, but what impressed me was that he didn’t talk to us like we were kids. He didn’t talk down to us. He treated us as equals who just didn’t have the education and life experience he had. 

He was a great teacher for me. He was energized and intense. When you had his attention, you had his FULL attention. A few moments stand out:

When he read The Call of the Wild, a wonderful book about a sled dog, he opened the

huge windows in the classroom on a cold winter day and read aloud as snow flurries swirled around our feet. 

He showed us how to frame a building and helped us build scale models of houses and garages. 

When I casually mentioned my family was getting a pop-up camper, he diagramed how and where to weld the hitch to the frame of the car we would use to tow the trailer. (I’m not sure if he expected an 11-year-old boy to actually do the welding or just impart the information, diagrams and all, to my Dad.)

You know how it is, you see the teachers you had in younger grades around the building. It was the same for me. I saw him around until I left the building and went to high school. 

I didn’t think about Mr. Hone for a very long time - about 18 years. In those years, I finished high school and college, got married, started a family and was, of course, working.

I came home from work one day and casually turned on the TV - The Oprah Winfrey talk show was on - and these were the days when her talk show was a lot like the Jerry Springer or Maury Povich shows. That is to say, very sensationalistic with all sorts of strange and bizarre people featured each day. 

And there was Mr. Hone and his wife casually chatting with Oprah. They met in his 6th grade math class. He was her teacher and, a few years later, when she turned 17, they married. It was national news. He even went to jail for a brief time.

I was shocked and stunned. I just stood there in my kitchen, mouth agape and just stared at the TV. I mean who does that?

That was the last time I saw my 6th grade teacher and it’s kind of a funny story to tell.  But, when I think about Mr. Hone (Here I am, 60 years old and he’s still Mister Hone to me), I think about how enthusiastic he was in the classroom, how he loved to impart knowledge to his young charges and how intense his teaching style was. 

Sadly, as I was researching this post, I discovered that Mr. Hone passed away this September. He made an impression on me. I hope I carry some of his respect for students in my teaching style.  

And, if anyone wants to know how to weld a trailer hitch to a car, I’d be happy to diagram it out for you.