Dear Miss Agler

 

"Dear Miss Agler..."

 First Published in Short and Sweet a Different Beat

"A friend loves at all times." ~ Proverbs 17:17
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it"
~Proverbs 22:6

I stood still with one foot on top of the other while my third grade teacher read my assignment.  She had made me write it for the fourth time.  I held my breath until she smiled and put her hand on my arm. “This is a good story now, Judee,” she said as she looked at me over her specs. “The way you began the piece is better now and your script is interesting.”

This was HIGH praise from my third grade teacher, Miss Agler. She urged her kids to do their best and reach high. She took real pride in each of us.  To a child like me, who didn’t get praise at home, Miss Agler was the muse in my life.

“Thank you, Miss Agler!” I felt like I could float back to my seat. She liked my story!

I got almost no attention at home.  I was born when my brother was 13 and my sister was 10.  My folks thought they were through having kids and didn’t spend much time with me.  I wasn’t harmed, just not seen and left on my own. Miss Agler stepped into my life and filled that void in my heart.

Miss Agler was a force to be felt in spite of her prim, five foot frame and sensible shoes. She stressed reading, English, grammar, and cursive writing which I loved.  She taught us to respect adults and each other. Her core class rules to be on time and take turns gave me guide lines to live by that I didn’t get at home. She always said, “Good, better, best. Don’t rest until your good is better and your better is best.” I grew to love her very much and worked hard in school to please her.  I was the first child who earned all A’s in Miss Agler’s class!

I think we filled an empty space in each other’s lives. Miss Agler had never wed and gave her life to her students. She urged me to stick to my dream of writing.  Her interest and true view of my work meant so much to me.

When I was in fifth grade, my parents moved to Utah!  I was so sad and didn’t want to leave Miss Agler!  I sobbed in her arms and she vowed to write to me.

I felt so lost in Utah.  My folks sent me to a girls’ school in Salt Lake City.  I had to ride a Greyhound bus 25 miles to school and then walk about 2 miles.  At ten years old, I was scared I might go to sleep on the bus and wake up in Wyoming!

Miss Agler told me to take notes about those I met on the trip and put them in my stories. I wrote lots of stories and sent them all to her one by one. She wrote to me each week and gave me hints to spice up my work.

Then in mid-eighth grade, my parents moved to California and once more I was thrown into a new school where I knew no one.  Miss Agler wrote to me and urged me “to make a friend, be a friend, and make notes for your writing.”

I didn’t write any stories for a long time when I married at eighteen and had two kids.  I still sent mail and snap shots of my kids as they grew and were in dance and band. As time went on, I sent her pics of my grandchildren. When any of us won a prize or praise, Miss Agler was the first one I told.

She kept up the love mail with her wish for me to start school once more. So, I went to college one class at a time over 15 years. I don’t think I would have graduated without her faith in me. I wished she could have been there but I sent pics and she wrote back, “How great!  I am SO proud of you!” I felt like I had as a kid, waiting at her desk, to see her smile and then pat my arm and say, “Well done”.

In 2003, I went back to Nebraska to see Miss Agler.  As I drove up to the small house, the past filled my mind and heart.  There she was with her big smile.  I ran up the walk and we hugged each other. She was so small! She walked with a cane but her smile and her kind eyes were the same. Her mind was still sharp at 92 and Miss Agler had run the town library after she retired from teaching.

She had tea laid out for us and as I sat down with her, my eyes were drawn to the wall behind her. There on the wall of this small town teacher - - were hundreds of pictures of her students over the years - - as kids and then with their own kids and even their grandchildren!! She had kept in touch with them ALL and knew what each one had done and where they lived!  She asked me to look in a cupboard beside her chair. She had kept ALL my stories and pulled out one after the other to show me.  “Please take them home with you and make a book out of them,” she told me.  Tears ran down my face as I took them from her.  It was quite a stack and she had saved them all!

That day as I sat in Miss Agler’s front room in her small house, she served me tea in her best cups, worn from long use. I looked at the faded chairs and the rag rugs on the floors. She hadn’t earned much through teaching and lived alone most of her life. Miss Agler could not fund her dream to take trips but toured that world through her books and maps. By people’s gauge, she had no fame. Yet she was so important to me and the rest of her students. She had loving friends and her church. She was happy with what she had. 

When I looked at her wall of memories, I realized that one little person can have a very BIG impact on the world, one person at a time.  “Good, better, best. Never rest until your good is better and your better is best.” When I got home - - I started writing again.

Though my dear teacher only lived another four years after that visit, she will live on in the memories of all those hundreds and hundreds of students that she inspired in her 96 years.