There is always that one teacher who sticks with you. It doesn’t matter how much time has passed since you had him, just someone mentioning his name brings a laugh from all your buddies. Because they know what fun went down in that teacher’s classroom when the bell rang and the door closed. Mr. Doerner was that teacher for me and my classmates, and I know that forever as we run into each other in the future or at class reunions, his name will bring a smile to everyone’s face. Only one time did we hear his name spoken when my buddies & I stared stone faced, feeling like we couldn’t catch our breath; the day his name was followed by the words “passed away”.
Mr David Doerner taught High School Social Studies “officially”, and everything else under the sun along with it. Among my friends, we referred to him as Dave; not the disrespectful way of calling a person with authority by their first name, but out of love and making him “one of us”-like we really knew him. He had funny-actually downright stupid looking-costumes that he wore when we started learning of a new country and its contribution to western civilization. But somehow between the laughing and the eye rolling, all the stuff he was teaching really sunk in. He had to be observed one time when he was teaching us all about Alexander the Great; we still remember the amazed look on each other’s faces as we realized we actually knew the answers to the questions he would call on us for. We thought it was some wizardry he was using on us to impress the Vice Principal, so he would get a raise; instead it all boiled down to him making learning fun, which made us understand the information.
Mr Doerner was not a fashion icon, in fact he always had his pants hemmed just a little too short. We concluded he really must like them like that because he never changed tailors or pant length size even after we ribbed him about them. One time most of us in class rolled our pants up to match his pant length for when we walked into class; he noticed right away, laughed and said we had “finally learned how to ‘dress for success’”. One of the best memories we took away from his classroom was that it is okay to laugh at ourselves, and also to make other people laugh by not being afraid to look silly.
I can’t say which one of us took it the hardest when we learned he was sick, but it was a shared hurt that cut deeply. At first we were so focused on the potential loss of him, that it took our one friend who had Mr Doerner’s quick wit and funny sense of humor to knock us out of shock when he started imitating the things he would say, and use the “Dave-isms” to make us start thinking of him rather than just his disease.
We never again let his disease overshadow the great man who he was to each of us. And when he passed away, 8 of us marched into his calling hours to greet his wife and family with our pants rolled “just a little too short”, in typical Dave fashion. His wife said she didn’t know our names, but she knew we must be “the boys he talked about for years”.
Goodbye Mr Doerner, thank you, and Godspeed; until we meet again.
