Stories of My Life

I stood there and watched thirty-five children disappear in almost as many different directions and was suddenly horrified by what I’d done. What if someone got lost or hurt? Suppose they didn’t come back on

time? What would I do then? For fifty minutes I simply sat on a bench near the clock becoming more anxious by the minute. Every now and then in the distance I’d hear a happy shout from a voice I recognized. The children were having fun, but I certainly wasn’t. I must have been out of my mind. Then, miraculously, just before 2:50, I saw them come running from every direction. They lined up before me two by two and at exactly 2:50, I counted heads. I had thirty-four happy children standing exactly where they should. I was one short.

“Has anyone seen Godfrey?” I asked, trying hard not to panic. At that moment, a grinning Godfrey stepped out from behind a large tree and took his place at the end of the line. Everyone was on time, except the bus driver, that is. He didn’t appear until five after two. But we got back to school on time. No one told on their irresponsible teacher. All was well.

Some years ago I had a phone call from out of the blue. It was Clara Washington, one of my Lovettsville sixth graders of years before. She was a grandmother now. She had read my books to her children and was now reading them to her grandchildren. Curious about the author, she went to my website and learned to her delight that I had been Miss Womeldorf, her sixth-grade teacher. Clara wanted to arrange a reunion of the class. If she did, would I come? “Name the day,” I said. Eleven of the thirty-six came with various spouses and children. And those there gave me news of several of the others who weren’t. Junior was now the owner of a successful trash-hauling business. Godfrey had come back from Vietnam but not really home. He spent most of his time in the woods alone. Someone had seen him in town and told him about the reunion. He had said he might come, but to my sorrow, he didn’t.

I’d taken the little album into which I’d pasted their school pictures and pictures of the surprise farewell party they’d given me at the end of the year.

“I can’t believe you kept our pictures,” Suzy said.

“I can believe I kept them,” I said. “I can’t believe that I was able to find them.”

A few years before the reunion, I was driving from Dulles Airport to a high school reunion in Charles Town when I saw a sign pointing toward Lovettsville. On an impulse, I drove there. I hadn’t seen the school or the town since I’d left in 1955. The old building was now a community center. I was directed to the new one. It was June and school was just over for the year. I stopped at the office, as visitors always have to these days. “I taught in the old school many years ago,” I said to the secretary. “Would it be all right if I just looked around?”

She told me that it was the last day for the staff, so they were all busy, but she didn’t think they’d mind if I looked around. It was a beautiful new school, the kind that I wished I could have given my sixth graders. The center of the building was a large library where the librarian was sitting on the floor shelving books. She looked up when I came in. It was evident that she was hot and tired and not at all eager to entertain a visitor. I apologized but told her that I’d taught in the old school where the only library was the collection of books I’d brought from home to put in my classroom. I was so thrilled to see that the children of Lovettsville now had this great library.

She asked me what my name was. “Back then, I was Katherine Womeldorf,” I said. “I’m Katherine Paterson now.”

“You’re kidding,” she said. “Not Katherine Paterson the writer.”

I admitted that I was.

“You have made my day,” she said, and got up from the floor to shake my hand. Then she sent someone to summon all the teachers in the building. I had a great time answering their questions, hearing about life in Lovettsville today, signing the library’s collection of my books. There were even teachers who remembered some of the teachers I had taught with more than thirty years before.

The young man who was the current sixth-grade teacher said: “Every year when we read Bridge to Terabithia I tell my students that Lovettsville is Lark Creek, and they never believe me.”

I assured him that he was right.

His face lit up with a triumphant smile. “Now they’ll have to believe me,” he said.

One of the most useful bits of advice for beginning teachers was given to me by an ex-teacher during my last year in college. She had heard that I was planning to teach the following year. “You’re very young looking,” she said. “And sometimes children take advantage of young teachers, so I want to pass along the most helpful advice I was given when I was a young teacher. This is it. When you begin to feel a slight rumbling in the class that you sense is going to build, stand up in front. Don’t say anything. Just think as hard as you can: ‘If you don’t sit down and shut up I’m going to beat the living daylights out of you.’ Remember, don’t say a word. You’ll ruin it if you say anything.” I can’t recall ever having to use this advice in Lovettsville. But the time would come.

It wasn’t until eight years later, in 1963, that I found myself a classroom teacher again. John and I had been married a year when he decided to pursue a graduate degree at Princeton Theological Seminary. He quickly found a part-time job at the large Presbyterian church that abuts the Princeton University campus, but I would need a full-time job if we were going to make ends meet. The State of New Jersey was less than impressed with my sparse college credits in education or my single year in a school in rural Virginia, so there was no hope that I could teach in a public school.

I learned somehow of an opening at a boys’ prep school a few miles away. They needed someone who could teach the eleventh- and twelfth-grade Sacred Studies, a required course in this Methodist school, and seventh-grade English. By this time I had had three years of theological training and I had majored in English, so it looked like the ideal job.

In late August the headmaster invited me over for an interview. He was a large, imposing former District Superintendent of the Methodist Church. He assured me that on paper I was well qualified for the position, but he needed to explain that the boys had been so cruel to the last Sacred Studies Master, that he had fled before the semester was over. He looked at me closely over his wide desk. “Do you think you can manage it?”

“I’ll try,” I said a bit shakily.

He slammed his fist on the desk. “Trying won’t do it! It’s sink or swim.”

I needed the job, so I agreed to take it.

“Oh, by the way,” I said, “what textbook do you use?”

“The Bible,” he said as though that should be self-evident.

By November we worked our way from Genesis through the Patriarchs and Judges, past David and Solomon and into the troubled history of the divided Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The boys mostly behaved, but it was clear that they felt the study of the Bible was useless and I should therefore be passing out easy A’s simply for their willingness to sit through class. On that particular day, we had gotten as far as the last days of the Kingdom of Israel, which consists of the assassination of one king after another until the country is ripe for the Assyrian conquest.

Someone pointed out for the umpteenth time how foolish those people were, they did nothing but kill off their kings. Why, when there were so many important things to learn, were they wasting their time studying this stuff?

Before I could answer, the door to the classroom was thrown open. The history master was standing in the doorway, ashen faced. “The president has been shot,” he said.

Without a word, we filed out into the common area where there was a large television set and watched in horror until Walter Cronkite finally announced the news that Kennedy was dead. The boys didn’t try to argue about the stupidity of the ancient Hebrews again.

When I had to tell the headmaster that I was expecting a baby, I was sure he’d dismiss me. If I had been a public school teacher in New Jersey in those days, I would have had to resign. But the headmaster thought it would be good for the boys and told me I should teach as long as I felt up to it. I finished the year. Two weeks later, John Jr. was born. To the boys’ credit, they were terrific, almost gallant, in their concern for their pregnant “master.”