An Education

"A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others."

-L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I got the news yesterday that a giant of my formative years passed away. Not only was Mary Louise Dukes the grandmother of my best friend of 32 years (and counting), but she was also my third grade teacher. Little did I know when I entered that classroom on Peake Road in 1981 that my life - both personally and educationally - would be so transformed.

In my mind's eye, I can still see that classroom - the way it was laid out with Mrs. Dukes' desk on the left, cubby holes on the rear right, the children's desks neatly arranged in rows with canvas satchels containing glue, pencils and our Georgia history book, a dusty blue, fabric-bound book called Our Georgia, where we learned about Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, among others.

I had always enjoyed school, but in third grade I loved it, and it was due in large part to Mrs. Dukes. She made learning fun. She taught us our multiplication tables, how to write in cursive (is that even taught anymore?) and, most importantly, she instilled in me a love of reading and writing that has been with me my entire life. I majored in English in college and am a professional writer today, and I can honestly say my life may have taken a much different course had it not been for one of my earliest cheerleaders. (She loved to tell the story of how she read a story I wrote as a second grader and insisted right there on the spot that I be in her third grade class.)

But Mrs. Dukes wasn't just an intellectual mind. She had a fun-loving soul and a prankster's heart. Along with her granddaughter, my best friend, Angie, I loved to hear stories of pranks she pulled as a child -- including scaring the wits out of a family maid with a mannequin's foot, artfully decorated with red fingernail polish and positioned underneath a sofa. When Angie and I were in fourth grade, we thought we could out-prank the prankster by phoning her on April Fool's Day, a Sunday, and in our most mature voices impersonating the school's secretary, Mrs. Gunnels, and the headmaster, Henry Tift, to convince Mrs. Dukes that there was an "emergency" faculty meeting that she had to attend immediately. Pleased with ourselves, our humor soon turned to panic when we showed up at school on Monday and our teacher informed the class that a hoax had been perpetrated against a third grade teacher the day prior. Not only had she had come all the way out to the school on a Sunday for a non-existent meeting, but she had also gotten a flat tire, and when the guilty party were discovered, they were going to be made to pay for the tire. I'm sure Mrs. Dukes enjoyed our squirming and bickering over who was going to have to pay the princely sum of $50 before 'fessing up to her own April Fool's joke. We were schooled in a very real sense that day.

I kept up with Mrs. Dukes through the years, through Angie and visits of my own. I saw her less than a year ago at John Wesley Villas, where she was living, and she still had that same twinkle and sparkle in her eyes, declaring that between her Olive Garden lunch (that included a glass of wine) and my visit, it was a banner day. She introduced me to her friends as one of her best and brightest students. High praise, indeed.

Old age did not slow her down much, and she had recently decided that she wanted to publish a book of her memories and stories. Angie had been working diligently on this and had assembled a book, complete with photos, to give her on her birthday, August 19. She passed away on the 18th, but she knew her book was ready. In Excerpts from the Life of a Bad Good Girl or a Good Bad Girl (great title, no?), she recalls going to see the renovated stained glass windows in St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Macon, and ponders what heaven will be like.

"I have been having so much trouble getting up and down the past several years because of pain in my knees," she wrote. "We know that there is no pain in Heaven, so I find myself looking forward to angel knees as much as angel wings."

I know you are well again and at peace. Thank you for what you have meant to me and countless other students throughout Macon. Godspeed, dear teacher and sweet friend.