Teachers in class and in life

September’s brisk return to school reminds many of us of teachers past as our children confront their teachers of next semester.  With time, often decades of it, we realize which teachers truly stamped our thinking, our values and our life.

This summer, my family helped celebrate 80 years of living, learning and teaching by Antoinette Bosco, known to all as Toni. Born and raised near the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Toni raised seven children on her own, edited newspapers, lectured on social justice and wrote more than a dozen books.

Just talking to Toni – a fountain of ideas, stories and professional know-how – can exhaust me. But then I revive. She always shows that it can be done, that one can make a go of it as a writer. Or as anything else that fits one’s gifts and God’s calling.

At her party in a Rensselaer banquet hall, full of grandchildren dashing about, Toni still vibrated with her intense, expectant energy. No time for old memories, she always talks about new ideas, projects and issues. She lives in now.

When my wife was 17, she interned as a proof-reader for Toni and learned the trade from her. We both turn to Toni when discouraged with the hard bumps in the writing life. She concedes the struggle, but always points a way out.

Not so far from Toni’s party, another great teacher recuperates from a fall while his mind continues to percolate. John Dwyer, also known to all by his first name despite degrees from German and American universities, remains a lodestone to me and hundreds others in the Albany diocese.

After a college teaching career, John and his wife Odile – a friend to all his students – retired to his childhood home in the Catskills. He then taught at St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry in Albany for more than 15 years.

When I took my first class with John, I was a reporter for the Times Union who often wrote on religion.

As John led my class through the Gospels and Paul’s letters, I encountered the living Word of God with a bang. We learned, and felt, that we could get right next to Christ through the accounts of those who knew Him.

As a teacher, John conveys conviction, excitement and curiosity. At every question, he halted his lecture, answered briskly and proceeded.

Often, when writing news articles or books, I call him with a question on, say, Plato’s concept of the ideal or medieval approaches to Sabbath-keeping. And always, he answers in a few minutes as I scribble all the notes I can. Then, “Anything else?” he asks.

Along the way, John wrote books and hundreds of sets of notes on various topics. The latter he generously compiled on a CD which he hands out. His book, “Church History: Twenty Centuries of Catholic Christianity,” is a concise gem.

While time to remember teachers living, I note the death last week of

Sister Jacqueline M. Garland, a Sister of Mercy. My family knew her through the Black Catholic Apostolate, where we both belonged. Sr. Jackie embodied faith and warmth while an irreverent humor glinted in her blue eyes.

Once, after hearing that my wife and I had lost a third parent within a two-year period, she turned to a mutual friend and said, “God must love that family.” It’s a deeply Catholic sentiment, and I feel the truth of it again right now.

 (08/28/08)