Originally published at The Last Exit to Babylon. Please leave any comments there.
In 1066, William the Conqueror led the Norman invasion of England.
Ludwig von Beethoven put precisely 50 grains of coffee in each cup, no more and no less. He was 5'4" tall, effectively making him the shortest titan ever to walk the earth.
Guiseppe Verdi did not actually die. During a carriage ride late in life, he inexplicable morphed into Michael Jackson.
These are the things I remember from high school, particularly from my world history and music history classes. I wasn't the best of students back then, and I did my best to simply skate through most of my classes with a minimum of effort. And by my senior year, I freely admit I took classes like music history because I was looking for the easy grade. Oddly enough, I did find myself more interested in the subject than I'd anticipated. My teacher, Wayne C. Martin, seemed to have that effect. To this day, some of my fondest memories from high school are from his classes.
Mr. Martin was one of the first teachers I'd ever had who treated his students much more as actual people than as a bunch of unrily kids it was his misfortune to be handed as a class. I never really thought about it at the time, but looking back at my memories of his classes, his teaching style came across less like a lecture and more like the joy a scholar feels at sharing with fellow students choice bits of knowledge he'd come across on his own path to enlightenment. It's no accident that when the time came in college to choose some elective classes to fill gaps in my schedule and add credit hours toward graduation, I picked history classes. Not because I thought they'd be easy As to pad my GPA, but because I was truly interested in the subject. And I did quite well in them, too. I think Mr. Martin deserves much of the credit, both for giving me a good foundation and giving me some of his own joy in the subject matter.
I learned tonight that Mr. Martin died this past Tuesday. The world is definitely poorer for his absence, but much richer for the legacy he left behind. I know he inspired a multitude of students, some of home have gone on to become teachers themselves.
I was wolly unsurprised to see that he'd written his own obituary. It seemed like the kind of detail he'd want to have done just so, and it gave him one final moment to pass on one of the choice facts he'd picked up over the years. I don't think he'd mind me reprinting it here:
"Wayne Calvin Martin is moving from his long-time home on Austin Street two blocks south of the old San Jacinto High School to the Abbey Mausoleum on the grounds of Forest Park Lawndale where he has purchased a small space in the north-side columbarium wall with a glass window near the back of the hall on your left as you face the back door. You can see his picture in the window along with a few mementos from his long rich life. A small folded paper crane is a memory of two years in Japan (the defining experience of his life), a sprig of rosemary in memory of teaching great kids for 39 years in HISD. Greek boys in 500 BC wove rosemary into their hair on test day "to make them smarter." The little crystal owl is Athena's totem. Enough said. The kitty cats were his friends and companions in his happy old age. The Abbey is open every day from dawn to dusk for visitation. Drop by and say hello."
- Written by Mr. Martin on the 17th of February 2009.
I do wish I'd known about the rosemary twenty years ago.
