Teacher's memoir recalls 'Voices from Room 6'

By KATHLEEN LAMANNA- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

After 47 years as a teacher at Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons School in Schenectady, Dr. Paul O'Brien felt he needed some closure. The teacher, who retired in 2014, recently wrote a memoir titled, "Voices from Room 6: A Teacher Remembers."

Known informally as "O.B." by hundreds of students, Dr. O'Brien began teaching English at Notre Dame High School in 1967, before the school's 1975 merger with Bishop Gibbons. He's still in contact with many of his former students.

Dr. O'Brien is the first to admit that his book only captures a small handful of his experiences over nearly 50 years of teaching.

Many of the stories he recounts in his memoir speak of loss or tense situations, but "I tend to be a glass-half-full person," the author told The Evangelist. "I try to see the light when there is a lot of darkness."

In "Voices from Room 6," Dr. O'Brien tells one story about a former student, Danny, who was shot and killed around Christmas.

"Outgoing, blessed with ebullience and charisma, he was loved by both his peers and the faculty," Dr. O'Brien writes. Danny had gone into a sub shop with a toy gun, but a security guard didn't realize the gun was fake. "Such a bright star, extinguished much too early in one of life's darker traps."

"Voices from Room 6" recounts other events that are significantly more upbeat, including the time he met Philippe Petit, who visited the school just weeks before he won an Academy Award for best documentary for the film "Man on Wire." Mr. Petit is known for his famous 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center.

In the memoir, Dr. O'Brien also tells stories of his own childhood, his first year as a teacher and the death of beloved colleague Tom Maguire, who died during his time as a teacher at ND-BG. The author describes a "director's chair with the name 'Maguire' written across the back, and on the seat a calculus text and his yardstick" placed in the hallway as a memorial to the teacher and musical director.

In another story, Dr. O'Brien also recalls, after the death of a student named Tommy in 1982, the school's basketball team winning an important game that "we never should have won.

"That night, it was so special," he told The Evangelist. "The excitement that night was something I had never experienced."

Writing the memoir was cathartic for the retired teacher, though "it's almost like fuel for making you want to do more," he admitted, describing it as a pebble tossed into in water that sent out ripples to all of his old connections.

"I needed to do it," he said. "I had a sad feeling when I put those things [from my former classroom] in a box."

Finishing the book, he added, was "like when you go to sleep after a really long day. It's a sense of closure."

Dr. O'Brien is currently on his third printing of "Voices from Room 6," and now plans to write another memoir about the earlier years of his life.

His book is available at local bookstores in Troy, as well as on Amazon.com -- or, for those who chance to meet him out in the community, he'll sell a copy out of the back of his car.[[In-content Ad]]