You Taught Me More Than German

Dear Herr Ward,

Writing you a letter that you can read over my shoulder is the only way left to me now to let you know the impact you made in my life. I tried to tell you as it happened but I know that I didn't do it well.

How could I? I only realized what it meant as I grew older. Hindsight being 20-20 and all that. Or perhaps "Im Nachhinein", I can understand it better, now.

We both knew that I was floundering in German class. No surprise or artifice there. All the cool kids took French and the smart kids took Spanish, and the to-be-rich kids took Japanese... and I took German because that's what we'd started with in elementary school.

Fortunately for me; you were my teacher. My brilliant, quirky, and perceptive teacher. I had no idea about who YOU really were. No idea of your military service, time at Yale, and the top-secret Army Counterintelligence Corps work.

To me: you were Teacher, and once we got past German II, you were a much-needed stable father-figure without all the messy family attachments.

How did you do it, I wonder? I, along with the rest of the 'Psycho-Wards' crashed your study periods, your grading time, your morning coffee. I told you what happened on the bus, all the mundane 'does he like me? how will I know he likes me?' that a teen girl can carry, asked you for recommendations for scholarships and college essays, shared the jubilation when I won one... and cried at your desk when college evaporated for me.

I let you see it all. All of the emotions that I had to keep buried at home. The anger, sadness, fear along with the heartbreak of first love. Never once, did you act like I was pestering you. Never once did you turn any of us away. You only made me feel welcomed.

You came to see the Senior Class Play, even after you'd already experienced EVERY SECOND of the lead up to it as I shared each rehearsal ("Herr Ward! I sang my solo flat! Then I sang the words of the OTHER person! I could just DIE!"), the ache of unrequited love when I was in a scene with my current crush ("I know, Judey; it can be a wonderful thing..."), and the adventure of taking multiple buses to get home after long rehearsals as a 'Tripper Kid' bussed into the city school making their way back home.

You came to that play and gave me a rose the next day. I know you gave them to all of the Psycho-Ward girls, but I didn't tell you that it was the only one I received. And I didn't tell you that my own father didn't attend any of the showing. Like much about my dad, we just didn't discuss it.

I think you knew, though. It's likely that a retired Army Counterintelligence Major could decode an adolescent girl that never felt like she quite fit in, that was hungry to have a father's approval. You saw me and listened to more than my fractured German conjugations and heard all that I left unsaid without pressing me to talk about it.

That was both an example and a gift, that giving of time when someone is working through their worst thoughts and times. It's something that I try to do myself these days.

I believe people aren't ready to hear solutions until they make room for them by sharing the words they need to say first. Only then can they take in the questions and suggestions to help them move from one emotional place to another.

Without your patient example (and wasn't I, weren't we ALL, fortunate that it was a time and a place, and you a good and honorable man that you never took advantage of our trust?!) I may not be doing what I do now; listening to people when they are in crisis- draining the words- and offering them help and solutions.

I didn't know at the time the lasting impact you'd made in my life, I only know how proud I was to be one of your 'Significant Darlings'. We were so fortunate to have you in our life.

Danke sehr und Ich liebe dich, Herr Ward.

My respect and love,

Judey