Delores Mayhew
Retired schoolteacher, Piney Grove, Arkansas
Profiles by Delores Mayhew
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Sergio Mendes (1941-2024) — Sergio
Sergio Mendes was a Brazilian musician who brought bossa nova to audiences clear around the world with hits like "Mas Que Nada," earning himself a Grammy and lasting international acclaim along the way. I'll be the first to admit my own musical taste runs to Patsy Cline and the old hymns we sang at church growing up, nothing exotic about it at all, but I do appreciate anybody who takes a sound that started small, close to home, and somehow gets the whole wide world humming along to it too. That's a gift, carrying something local out into places it was never expected to travel. I had a former student, oh, must be near thirty years back, who played trumpet like it was going out of style and ended up touring with a jazz band out of Little Rock — never made it international like Mr. Mendes, but I think of him every time I read about a musician who took their hometown sound somewhere nobody expected it to go.
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Erik the Red (c. 950-c. 1003) — Erik
Erik the Red founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland, way back around the year 1000 by our reckoning, and opened the door for the Vikings to keep exploring the North Atlantic after him. I got two beehives from my neighbor this past winter and have been reading up on all sorts of things I never had cause to know before, and somewhere in there I fell down a little rabbit hole about the old explorers, Erik the Red included. Now, I can't say I approve of everything those old Norsemen got up to, from what the history books tell — plenty of trouble followed in their wake. But I do admire anybody willing to load up a boat and sail toward land nobody in their family had ever laid eyes on, trusting there'd be something worth finding on the other side. Takes a particular kind of nerve, same nerve my own great-great-grandparents needed coming to these Ozark hills with nothing but a wagon and a prayer.
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Kofi Siriboe (b. 1993) — Kofi
Kofi Siriboe is a young actor best known for the film "Girls Trip" and the drama series "Queen Sugar," and from what I've read he's used the attention that came with that success to talk plainly about mental health and about being a good father, which in my book counts for more than any award show trophy. I raised four children mostly on my own after I lost my first husband, Earl, and I can tell you fatherhood gets talked about far too little as something a man has to work at, same as any trade. It's a fine thing to see a young man with a public platform choose to spend some of it on that instead of just chasing the next role. I think of a few of my former students' daddies who could have used somebody famous saying it was all right to talk about hard days out loud. Talent opens the door, but character is what a person does once they're standing in it.
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Kofi Kingston (b. 1981) — Kofi
I'll admit right up front I have never once watched professional wrestling and don't intend to start, but my great-grandson can recite Kofi Kingston's championship reign like it's Scripture, and that boy's enthusiasm has taught me more about paying attention to what young people love than any column I could write on the subject. Kofi Kingston is a Ghanaian-American wrestler known for a high-flying style and one of the longest WWE tag-team title reigns anybody's had, and by every account he's beloved — not just watched, beloved — by the fans who follow him. I had a student once, oh, must be twenty-five years back now, who couldn't sit still in his chair to save his life but turned into pure grace the second you put him on the playground equipment. Some folks are just built to move, and the Lord gives some people a body that does things the rest of us can only admire from the bleachers. Good for Kofi Kingston, using his the way he was made to.
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Camille Claudel (1864-1943) — Camille
Camille Claudel made sculptures that carried real emotional weight, and it's only in recent generations that she's gotten proper credit as one of the great artists of her era instead of a footnote to someone else's story. That kind of overdue recognition always gets to me a little — I think of a few of my own former students, sharp girls back in the seventies and eighties, who didn't get pushed the way the boys in class did, not out of anybody's cruelty exactly, just how things were arranged back then. It took Claudel's work a long time to be seen clearly for what it was, on its own terms, and I expect that says more about the eyes looking at it over the years than about the sculptures themselves, which were apparently powerful the whole time. I don't know a great deal about fine art, my taste runs simpler, but I know what it looks like when good work sits waiting a long while for somebody to finally notice it properly. Better late than never, as my mother used to say.
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Rosa Raisa (1893-1963) — Rosa
Rosa Raisa premiered roles in Puccini's operas and was known for a voice with real power and warmth in it, which is a description I like a good deal, because warmth is the part that's harder to teach than power. I've directed my share of little school Christmas programs over thirty-eight years, nothing on the scale of an opera house obviously, but I know the difference between a child who can hit the note and a child who can make you feel something while hitting it, and it sounds like Raisa had both in spades. Opera's not something I grew up around out here, we were more a hymn-singing, radio-on-Sunday kind of family, but I do love a voice that carries feeling as much as pitch, whatever the genre. It takes years of unglamorous practice to get a voice that reliable, and probably a good bit of heartache besides, if the old singers I've read about are any guide. I imagine Raisa earned every bit of that warmth the hard way, same as most worthwhile things are earned.
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Camila Cabello (b. 1997) — Camila
Camila Cabello came up in Fifth Harmony and then went and built a solid solo career after, which in my day would've been called "not resting on what worked," though I suppose nowadays there's fancier words for it. I'll admit most modern music doesn't have a tune I can hum along to on my morning walk, and I say that with love, not spite — my grandkids have tried for years to get me to appreciate it and mostly failed, though I keep an open mind because I raised four kids of my own and none of them turned out the way I expected either, in the good sense. What I do respect about Cabello's path is the nerve it takes to step out of something that's working and try something riskier that's entirely your own. I had students over the years who left a safe, easy grade to challenge themselves in something harder, and it rarely looked comfortable in the moment. Whether or not I'd choose her music for my kitchen radio, I admire anybody willing to bet on themselves like that.
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Liam O'Flaherty (1896-1984) — Liam
Liam O'Flaherty wrote "The Informer" and became one of the key figures of twentieth-century Irish literature, which is the kind of thing I imagine got taught in schools a lot fancier than my little two-room one ever was. I never got much formal education in Irish literature myself, night classes and an associate's degree only stretch so far when you're raising four kids and teaching third grade at the same time, but I've always believed a good story about ordinary people caught in something bigger than themselves doesn't need a diploma to appreciate. From what I understand, O'Flaherty wrote about people under real pressure, choices that weren't easy or clean, and made readers sit with the discomfort of that instead of looking away. I respect a writer who doesn't tidy things up just to make the ending sit better. Life mostly doesn't tidy up on its own timetable either, and the students I remember best were the ones who understood that early, same as O'Flaherty's characters apparently had to.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) — Pierre
Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted ordinary, joyful scenes of everyday life and made them glow, which is a gift I don't think gets enough credit next to the flashier kind of genius. My own eye runs more toward Patsy Cline than a museum wall, I'll be honest, but I understand the instinct behind painting a picnic or a dance instead of something grand and important — some of the best art, like some of the best teaching, is just paying real close attention to the regular, unremarkable moments most people rush past. I had a student once, years back, who could draw the recess yard so true to life you'd swear you could hear the kids hollering in it, and I think about her sometimes when I read about painters like Renoir. He didn't need kings and battles to make something people are still looking at more than a hundred years later. Just light, and people enjoying an afternoon. There's a lesson in that about noticing what's right in front of you, and I'll leave it there.
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Javier Sotomayor (b. 1967) — Javier
Javier Sotomayor set the world high jump record back in 1993, and here it is, decades later, still standing — which in track and field is about as rare as a student who remembers something you taught them thirty-eight years on. I've had students go on to do all sorts of things, and every so often one of them will do something that just sits there, unbroken, longer than anyone expected, and you realize you were watching something special happen without fully knowing it at the time. A record like that isn't luck. It's one person, on one particular day, having built up years of quiet preparation nobody in the stands ever saw. I don't know a thing about the science of jumping over a bar that high, but I know something about effort that outlasts the moment it happened in, because I taught third grade for thirty-eight years and some of what I planted took decades to show. Sotomayor's record has outlasted plenty of younger competitors by now, and I expect it'll outlast plenty more before somebody finally clears it.
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Omar Sy (b. 1978) — Omar
There's a kind of actor who gets famous and forgets where the ladder started, and then there's Omar Sy, who broke through in 'The Intouchables' and turned right around and put a foundation behind kids in France and Senegal who never got much of a running start. I spent thirty-eight years teaching third grade in a poor rural county, and if there's one thing that never left me it's a fierce protectiveness toward children who came into the world already behind -- it colors how I read almost every story I write, more than I probably let on. Mr. Sy didn't have to build clinics and schools for children he'd never meet, any more than I had to keep a coffee can of grocery money handy for a student whose lunch account had gone empty, but some folks just do it anyway once they've had a taste of what it's like to go without. I don't know French cinema from a hole in the ground, but I know a person spending their good fortune on somebody else's bad start, and I call that character, plain and simple.
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Janet Baker (b. 1933) — Janet
I'll say plainly that most modern music doesn't have a tune you can hum, but opera done right is a different matter, and from what I've read, Dame Janet Baker's singing was the kind that could still a room. A mezzo-soprano, they call it, and she was one of the great ones of her century by every account, no small thing in a field with that much competition and that little mercy for anyone who isn't excellent. What struck me more, though, was that she didn't just perform and retire quiet -- she turned to teaching young singers, same as I turned to a county newspaper column after thirty-eight years in a two-room schoolhouse, because some people aren't built to just stop passing along what they know. I had a student once who could sing the paint off the walls and never got a lesson past what our little school could offer her. I think about her every time I read of somebody who had real teachers standing behind them, and I'm glad, for Dame Baker's sake and her students', that she got to be one.
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Emma Watson (b. 1990) — Emma
My granddaughter made me sit through all those Harry Potter movies more than once, and I'll admit I came around on young Miss Watson somewhere around the third one -- she plays a girl who reads too much and speaks her mind, which sounded familiar to a few students I've had over the years. What I respect more, though, is what she did once the cameras stopped needing her: she took up the UN Women work and that HeForShe campaign, using notice she'd already earned to ask something useful of it, rather than just enjoying it. I was raising four kids and teaching third grade at the same time back when nobody was asking me what I thought equality ought to look like, so I have a soft spot for anybody, famous or not, who spends their platform on somebody besides themselves. She's still young, with plenty of years left to prove it wasn't just a nice speech. But so far she's kept showing up for it, and around here, showing up counts for an awful lot.
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Brenda Milner (b. 1918) — Brenda
I got two beehives from my neighbor this winter and have been amazed, week by week, how much patient watching it takes before you understand anything true about what's going on inside that box. Reading about Brenda Milner's life's work made me think of that same slow patience, just turned toward the human mind instead of honeybees. She spent years studying one patient, a man known as H.M., and out of that came understanding about memory that doctors still lean on today -- not a flashy discovery, just careful, faithful attention paid over a long time, a kind of work I respect more than I used to when I was young and wanted quicker results in my classroom. Thirty-eight years teaching third grade taught me that most real learning, in a mind of any age, comes slow and doesn't announce itself. Dr. Milner built a whole foundation of modern brain science that way, one careful observation stacked on another. I don't understand half the science, if I'm honest, but I understand devotion to a long, quiet task, and I know it when I see it.
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Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) — Anna
I never saw a real ballet until I was near grown, and I still haven't seen the kind Anna Pavlova danced except on an old film reel, but I understand something about a body trained past comfort into grace. She toured this whole world, half of it people who'd never once seen ballet done in person, carrying that art out to villages and small halls the way I used to carry a globe out to a two-room schoolhouse and try to make far-off places feel real to third graders in the Ozarks. I walk a mile every morning myself, rain or shine, hips and all, and call it church before church -- I expect Miss Pavlova understood that kind of discipline better than most, dancing through discomfort because the work was bigger than the ache. She didn't wait for the world to come find the ballet; she went and put it in front of people. I had a student once, painfully shy, who found her nerve in a school play and never lost it again. I think of her when I read about anyone who carried something beautiful to people who'd been told it wasn't for them.
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Donna Karan (b. 1948) — Donna
A fashion designer who built the DKNY brand into a household name, Donna Karan later founded the Urban Zen Foundation, which supports wellness, education, and the preservation of cultural traditions around the world. I've never worn a designer label in my life, closest I get is a nice dress for church, but I do understand building something from scratch that lasts, having kept this same forty acres in the family since the 1890s. Karan built a whole brand and then, once she didn't need to build anything else for herself, turned around and put her name behind causes bigger than fashion. That's the part of the story I find myself paying attention to more than the clothes — what somebody chooses to do with success once they've already got more of it than they need. Not everybody makes that turn. Some folks just keep building bigger versions of the same thing for themselves, and never get around to the second part at all.
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Donna Summer (1948-2012) — Donna
Known as the 'Queen of Disco,' Donna Summer won five Grammy Awards and helped define the sound of an entire musical era with hits like 'I Feel Love,' music that filled dance floors well past the years disco was supposedly out of fashion. I'll admit disco was never really my music — give me Patsy Cline and the old hymns any day of the week — but I try to defend the right of young people to like what they like even while I grumble about it, and I recognize genuine talent when I hear folks still talking about somebody's voice fifty years later. Five Grammys is no small thing in any genre, and building the actual sound of an era, one that other musicians are still borrowing from today, takes more than a good beat and a lucky moment. My grandkids play me some of her songs sometimes on that phone app, and even an old woman who prefers a hymn can hear the craft in it.
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Dorothy Hodgkin (1910-1994) — Dorothy
Dorothy Hodgkin, a chemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for using X-ray crystallography to work out the structures of penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin, breakthroughs that changed modern medicine for millions of people who never once heard her name. I don't pretend to understand the science of any of that, not one bit of it, but I understand what it means for medicine to actually work when a body needs it to, having lost my second husband Rusty to heart failure and watched doctors do everything modern medicine could offer him. Somebody had to figure out the actual shape of these molecules before any of those treatments could exist at all, and that's patient, exacting work that doesn't get much glory along the way. I think of it a little like tending a garden — you don't see the payoff for a long while, and most of the real work happens quietly, underground, long before anybody notices the results above the surface.
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Margaret Mead (1901-1978) — Margaret
Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist, brought the study of far-off societies in the South Pacific into everyday American conversation, and in the process reshaped how ordinary people here thought about culture and human behavior generally. I never traveled much further than the state line growing up, raising four kids and teaching third grade the whole while, so I have a real respect for somebody who went clear across the world and came back with something worth teaching the rest of us. My students used to ask me the wildest questions about people who lived differently than we did, and I always wished I'd had better answers for them than I did. Mead's whole career was built on taking those kinds of questions seriously instead of brushing them off, and bringing back real, patient observation instead of guesswork. It's easy to be certain about the way things ought to be done when you've never seen another way of doing them work out just fine.
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Jessica Tandy (1909-1994) — Jessica
Jessica Tandy won an Academy Award for 'Driving Miss Daisy' after a celebrated stage and film career spanning over six decades, still earning real acclaim well into her eighties, when most folks her age had long since been put out to pasture by the industry. I taught third grade for thirty-eight years myself and I have a particular fondness for anybody who's still doing good, honest work decades past when the world expects them to quit. There's a temptation, once you get some age on you, to let people write you off, and I've watched too many capable folks in my own life accept that verdict before their time. Tandy apparently never did. Winning her biggest award that late in a career is the kind of thing I'd hold up to my own students as proof that your best work doesn't have an expiration date just because somebody else thinks it should. My own students never got told that enough, and I suspect a lot of folks don't either.
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Jennifer Doudna (b. 1964) — Jennifer
Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-developing CRISPR gene-editing technology, a breakthrough that could someday treat genetic diseases doctors have never been able to touch before. I'll tell you plain, I'm skeptical of a lot of the computer stuff and the AI business my grandkids are always talking about, but this is different — this is science aimed squarely at healing sick children, and I've taught enough third-graders with hard starts in life to know how much a family would give for a cure like that. I had a student once, years back, born with a condition nobody could fix, and I still think of him sometimes when I hear about work like Doudna's. It took her a lifetime of careful, patient study to get to that discovery, the same kind of patience I tried to teach in a two-room schoolhouse for thirty-eight years. Some things really are worth the wait, and worth trusting even when you don't fully understand the machinery behind them.
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José Carreras (b. 1946) — Jose
Jose Carreras is one of opera's famous 'Three Tenors,' which is a world about as far removed from my little corner of Arkansas as I can rightly imagine, but he recovered from leukemia and then went and founded a foundation that's raised significant money for leukemia research and patient support worldwide ever since, and that part of the story I understand just fine, no matter where a person's from. I survived breast cancer myself back in 2003, and I remember exactly how much it meant that other folks who'd been through something similar were out there fighting for people still in the middle of it. There's a particular kind of gratitude that only comes from having actually been sick yourself and then turning around to help the people coming up behind you in that same hard fight. Carreras could have just gone back to singing and let his recovery be a private, personal blessing. Instead he built something lasting out of it for strangers he'll never meet. That's the kind of testimony I trust most.
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Tyler Perry (b. 1969) — Tyler
Tyler Perry rose up from homelessness to build one of the largest film studios in this whole country, and I don't know that I've read a comeback story quite like it in all my years writing this little column. What gets me most, though, isn't the studio itself, impressive as that is -- it's that he turned right around and gave generously to hurricane relief, to historically Black colleges, to families going through hard times, the same kind of hard times he clearly remembered firsthand. I taught poor kids for thirty-eight years in a two-room schoolhouse, and it made me fiercely protective of anybody who got a rough start in life, because I watched plenty of children carry burdens no child should have to carry. Perry didn't forget where he came from once he didn't have to live there anymore, and that's the part of his story I'd hold up to any one of my former students as the real lesson. It's not making it out that counts for everything. It's what you do once you're finally out.
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Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011) — Dennis
I'll admit right off that I don't understand computers well enough to explain what the C programming language actually does, but my grandson tried to walk me through it once over Thanksgiving, patient as anything, the way I used to be patient with my third graders learning long division. Dennis Ritchie created that language and co-created the Unix operating system, and apparently an enormous amount of the software the whole world still runs on today traces its roots straight back to work he did decades ago. I'm skeptical of most of 'the computer stuff,' truth be told, worried it's replacing patience and handwriting in children who never learn to sit still with a hard problem the old-fashioned way. But then I think about a man sitting with a genuinely hard problem for years until he solved it properly, laying a foundation other people are still building on generations later, and I recognize that kind of patience anywhere I find it, computer screen or classroom chalkboard alike. My mama always said good foundations don't announce themselves. Ritchie's sure didn't, and it's still holding up everything else.
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Justin Verlander (b. 1983) — Justin
I taught third grade for thirty-eight years in the same little schoolhouse, and I've got a particular soft spot for anybody who stays excellent at something difficult for a long, long stretch of time instead of burning bright and fading fast. Justin Verlander's been one of baseball's most durable and dominant pitchers for close to two decades now, which in a sport that chews up young arms awfully fast is its own kind of quiet miracle. He's also put real money behind childhood cancer research through his own foundation, and I always notice when a person's giving points straight at children, because children can't advocate for themselves the way grown folks can. I had a student once, sweet boy, sick most of that year, and I've never forgotten how much it mattered that somebody outside his family kept showing up for him too. Verlander winning a Cy Young Award is impressive. Verlander still funding research for sick kids two decades into a demanding career is the part that tells you who he actually is.
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Jason Mraz (b. 1977) — Jason
Well, I never expected to feel a kinship with a Grammy-winning singer from California, but here we are -- Jason Mraz runs an avocado farm that teaches sustainable agriculture, and I've got two beehives out back this winter that my neighbor talked me into, and let me tell you, once you start paying attention to what's growing under your own feet, it changes how you look at everybody who does the same. Mraz is best known for that song 'I'm Yours,' which my granddaughter has sung around my kitchen more times than I can count, but what struck me reading about him was the part where he gives a portion of his tour money to environmental causes without much fuss about it. Quiet generosity is the kind I trust most -- the kind that doesn't need an audience to keep going. My mama always said the Lord blesses the hands that stay busy in good dirt, and whether or not Mr. Mraz would put it that way, I expect he'd understand exactly what she meant.
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Tim Cook (b. 1960) — Timothy
I had a boy back in the eighties, quiet as a church mouse, who grew up to run a company bigger than some countries -- well, I don't know that for certain about Timothy Donald Cook, but I like to imagine somebody's third-grade teacher once watched him line up his crayons just so and thought, that one pays attention. Cook leads Apple now, and from what I've read he's committed to giving away the bulk of his fortune to charity, and pushes hard on privacy and treating workers fairly, which in my book counts for a great deal more than what a man has in the bank. My daddy used to say a person's true wealth is what they're willing to let go of, and I've never found a better measure than that. I've got a granddaughter who set up a weather app on my flip phone and I still don't fully trust 'the computer stuff,' but I trust a man who says he'll give most of it away when he doesn't have to. That's the kind of student you'd want in your class.
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Edward Jenner (1749-1823) — Edward
Edward Jenner developed the world's first vaccine, against smallpox, back in 1796, and I like to remind my grandkids, when they grumble about a shot at the doctor's office, that the whole idea of a vaccine started with one careful, curious country doctor who noticed something worth investigating and followed through on it properly. His discovery laid the foundation for the entire field of immunology and, generations later, helped eradicate smallpox worldwide, a disease that used to be one of humanity's most feared. I taught science to third graders for 38 years without ever fully being able to explain something as complicated as immunology, but I always could explain the basic lesson underneath it: pay attention, ask good questions, and follow through even when it takes a long time to see the results. Jenner did that, and it changed the world in a way most of us benefit from every single day without ever thinking about the country doctor who started it. That's worth a moment of thanks.
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Brian Wilson (1942-2025) — Brian
Brian Wilson was the creative force behind The Beach Boys, and even though the harmonies aren't quite the Patsy Cline and old hymns I grew up on, I understand enough about music to recognize when somebody's put real, careful craftsmanship into something that sounds effortless. 'Pet Sounds' is apparently considered one of the most influential and beautifully arranged pop albums ever made, and from what I've read, that beauty came from an enormous amount of deliberate, meticulous work in the studio, not just natural talent left alone to do its thing. I had a student once, years back, with a gift for music that took real discipline to actually turn into something, and Wilson's story reminds me a little of him — the kind of talent that only becomes something lasting once a person puts in the unglamorous hours behind it. Good music, like good teaching, usually looks easier from the outside than it actually was to build. Wilson built something that's still being listened to, generations later.
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Kevin Durant (b. 1988) — Kevin
Kevin Durant donated $10 million to fund a college access program for kids in his hometown of Prince George's County, Maryland, which is exactly the kind of investment I spent 38 years wishing more people with means understood the value of — not a scholarship for one lucky kid, but a whole program built to help many kids actually reach college in the first place. I taught plenty of bright students over the years who had every bit as much potential as anybody else, and what they lacked wasn't ability, it was access — someone believing it was worth investing real money in getting them there. Durant's an NBA superstar, obviously a different world from a rural county paper columnist, but the instinct behind that donation is the same one I tried to build in my own students: remembering where you came from and making the road a little easier for the ones coming up behind you. He's been praised for quiet, sustained philanthropy, and quiet and sustained is exactly the kind that lasts.
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Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) — Joshua
Joshua Reynolds was a leading English portrait painter and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, and the part of his career I appreciate most, having spent 38 years teaching, is that he spent real time and effort mentoring a whole generation of younger painters rather than just guarding his own reputation at the top of his field. I always told my student teachers that the measure of a good teacher isn't how much you know, it's whether the people you taught go on to do good work of their own once you're not standing over their shoulder anymore. Reynolds apparently understood that about his craft, using his standing to help elevate the status of British art more broadly, not just his own paintings. It's a fine thing, wanting other people to succeed after you, especially once you've already made a name for yourself and technically don't need to bother. Good teachers, in any field, tend to leave more behind than just their own best work.
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Donald Glover (b. 1983) — Donald
Donald Glover does about three different jobs well enough that any one of them would make a person notable — acting, Grammy-winning music under the name Childish Gambino, and creating the show 'Atlanta,' which I confess I've only heard about secondhand from my grandkids, television not really being my department. What I appreciate, hearing about him, is the range, because I taught third grade for 38 years and always noticed that the kids who ended up doing something unusual with their lives were rarely the ones who fit neatly into just one box in my classroom. Glover apparently doesn't fit into one either. My grandkids tell me his work is original, that he doesn't just repeat what's already popular, and there's something to be said for a person who keeps trying new things well into a successful career instead of just doing the one thing that already worked. I may not know his music, but I know staying curious when you didn't have to is a fine trait.
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Daniel Boone (1734-1820) — Daniel
Daniel Boone helped blaze the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap, and I think about him sometimes the way I think about my own family, who've farmed the same forty acres in the Ozarks since the 1890s — somebody, at some point, had to be first onto ground nobody else in the family had ever stood on. Boone opened the way for westward settlement at real personal risk, becoming a lasting symbol of pioneer resilience for generations of Americans who came after him, most of whom will never know his exact name but are living, in some small way, on account of the trail he helped cut. I taught frontier history to third graders for years, and Boone always got the kids' attention more than most historical figures, probably because there's something a child understands instinctively about a person brave enough to go first. My grandkids still ask about him. Good stories about good, hard-won ground never really go out of style.
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Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) — Joseph
Joseph Pulitzer understood something I spent 38 years trying to teach eight-year-olds: that telling the truth clearly, and doing it well, deserves real recognition. His name is on the Pulitzer Prizes now, which most folks know, but what I find more interesting is that he used his legacy to fund Columbia's journalism school, treating the craft of reporting as something worth teaching properly rather than something a person just picks up. I always told my third graders that words matter, that you'd better learn to write a true sentence before you learn to write a fancy one. Pulitzer built an entire institution around that same basic idea, elevating journalism and the arts into fields worthy of the country's highest public recognition. I don't know much about the newspaper business myself, beyond my little county-paper column, but I know good, honest writing when I see it, and I know it's worth someone spending a fortune to make sure future generations get taught how to do it right.
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Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879) — Sarah
Sarah Josepha Hale is a favorite of mine because she wrote 'Mary Had a Little Lamb,' which I have sung to more third graders over 38 years than I could ever count, usually to calm a classroom down on a rainy indoor-recess day. But the thing that really deserves the credit is her patience — she campaigned for nearly 40 years, writing letters and editorials, to get Thanksgiving established as a national holiday, and she finally succeeded in 1863. Forty years! I taught the same grade for 38 and thought that was a long stretch of steady work. Hale outlasted me by two, on one single cause, without ever once giving up on it. I always tell my students that most good things worth having take longer than you want them to. Hale is Exhibit A. Next time your family sits down to a Thanksgiving table, say a little thank-you to the writer lady who spent four decades making sure that table existed at all.
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Maria Montessori (1870-1952) — Maria
Maria Montessori was a doctor before she was ever an educator — one of the first women to earn a medical degree in Italy — and it shows in how carefully she built her method, treating a child's learning almost like something to be understood and respected rather than managed. I spent 38 years in a two-room schoolhouse doing my level best with the tools I had, and I'll be honest, I look back and wish I'd known more of what she figured out: that kids do their best learning with their hands, moving, choosing, not just sitting still and being talked at. Thousands of schools around the world still use her method today, which tells you she was onto something true and lasting, not just a trend. I've still got a soft spot for the old ways I was raised on, but a good teacher keeps learning too, right up to the end. Montessori proved that respecting a child is never wasted effort.
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John Muir (1838-1914) — John
John Muir loved the outdoors the way some of my former students loved recess — like it was the only part of the day that made sense to them. He walked and wrote his way across this country until people started listening, and because he wouldn't quit hollering about it, we've got Yosemite and a whole system of national parks that regular families can still walk into today. I started keeping bees this past winter, two hives my neighbor gave me, and I confess I think of Muir every time I'm out there in my bonnet and veil, paying closer attention to the created world than I ever did before. He co-founded the Sierra Club and folks still call him the Father of the National Parks, which is a fine thing to be called. My students used to roll their eyes when I made them go outside for science lessons. I tell you what — a person who really looks at creation usually ends up wanting to protect it. Muir sure did.
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James Madison (1751-1836) — James
James Madison was the kind of student I'd have loved to have in my third-grade classroom — quiet, careful, always doing the reading nobody assigned. He didn't have the booming voice of some of the other Founders, but he sat through that long, hot Philadelphia summer in 1787 taking notes nobody made him take, and because of it we actually know how our Constitution came together. I think about the boys I taught who never raised their hand but always had the answer — Madison strikes me as one of those. He spent years arguing that no single branch of government should get too big for its britches, checks and balances, same principle I taught with a hall pass and a raised eyebrow. He went on to be our fourth President and helped write the Bill of Rights besides. My grandkids say civics is boring. I tell them: somebody has to do the quiet, patient work, or nothing holds together. Madison did that work.
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Megan Fox (b. 1986) — Megan
Now I'll be honest with you, I have never once sat through one of those Transformers pictures — all that crashing and banging isn't my idea of an evening — but I do respect staying power when I see it, and Megan Fox has had a whole lot of it. Getting famous in one big loud franchise is one thing. Sticking around in both movies and television long after the noise dies down, that's a different kind of accomplishment, and it takes more grit than folks give it credit for. I had a boy in my third-grade class years back, quiet as a mouse, who everybody figured would fade into the wallpaper — instead he built himself a whole career nobody saw coming, just by refusing to quit showing up. That's what this reminds me of. Hollywood is a hard row to hoe, probably harder than a lot of folks realize sitting at home with the popcorn, and a body doesn't stay in that business for two decades on looks alone. There's always more work behind the scenes than the picture on screen lets on.
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Julia Roberts (b. 1967) — Julia
Julia Roberts won an Academy Award and has stayed one of Hollywood's most enduring leading ladies across decades now, known best for films like "Pretty Woman" and "Erin Brockovich," the kind of movies that still turn up on television on a rainy Sunday afternoon and get watched all over again happily. I'm more of a Hallmark-movie woman myself these days, not much for the flashier Hollywood pictures, but I'll admit I've sat through "Erin Brockovich" more than once and always come away admiring the character even more than the star playing her — a real determination in that story about standing up for regular folks against something much bigger than themselves. It takes genuine staying power to remain a leading lady across that many years in an industry that tends to move on from people fast, especially women, and Roberts has apparently managed it through sheer consistent skill rather than any one lucky role. That's the kind of long, steady career I respect in any line of work, mine included.
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Queen Victoria (1819-1901) — Victoria
Queen Victoria reigned in Britain for over sixty-three years, a stretch of industrial growth and expansion so significant it just got named after her outright — the Victorian era, plain and simple, which is about as large a mark as any one person can leave on a whole span of history. Sixty-three years is longer than I've been alive by not much, and longer than my own working life teaching third grade, longer even than either of my marriages put together, God rest both my husbands. I can't imagine holding one single job, however grand, for that many decades running, through that much change happening all around you the entire time. There's a particular kind of steadiness required just to stay the constant thread through six decades of a world transforming underneath you, whatever a person thinks of the specific politics of any one era. I taught in the same little schoolhouse for thirty-eight years myself and thought that was a long stretch. Sixty-three years puts my own record to shame.
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Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) — Leonard
Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic and composed "West Side Story," becoming one of the most celebrated musical figures of the whole twentieth century by most any measure you'd care to use. I've never been much for orchestral music, our little country church leaning heavier toward hymns and the occasional piano solo somebody's grandchild worked up for Christmas, but I've always had a soft spot for anybody who manages to be genuinely gifted at more than one thing at once — a composer who could also conduct, or a preacher who could also fix a leaky roof, that kind of person. Bernstein apparently did both the writing and the leading of an orchestra at the very highest level, which strikes this old schoolteacher as a rare double gift, same as the handful of students I had over the years who could excel at both reading and arithmetic without one talent crowding out the other. Some folks just get handed more than their fair share, and it's a joy watching what they do with it.
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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) — Oscar
Oscar Wilde wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "The Importance of Being Earnest," and he's remembered above all for a wit and a mastery of language that still gets quoted well over a century after he put pen to paper. I taught third grade for thirty-eight years and I always told my students that words, chosen carefully, could do more work than a whole page of ordinary ones, and Wilde is about the finest proof of that lesson I know of — a man who could apparently say more in one clever line than most writers manage in a whole chapter. I don't know that I'd have approved of everything about the man's life, being an old-fashioned churchgoing woman myself, but I've never once let my own opinions about somebody's living keep me from admiring genuine talent when I see it plain in front of me. A gift for language like that is a gift regardless of who's holding it, and I taught enough kids to know a real one when it turns up.
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Isaac Hayes (1942-2008) — Isaac
Isaac Hayes wrote and performed the Oscar-winning "Theme from Shaft," which helped define the whole sound of 1970s movies, and by every account he stayed a generous, longtime supporter of charitable causes back home in Memphis his whole life besides. I don't listen to much soul or funk music myself, my tastes running more toward hymns and Patsy Cline, but I do appreciate a man who made it big and didn't forget the town that raised him — plenty do, once the fame arrives, and it's always a little disappointing when they do. My own hometown never asked much of the folks who left it and made good, but the ones who came back and gave something back always earned a special kind of respect around here, more than the fame itself ever did on its own. Sounds like Isaac Hayes was cut from that same cloth, wherever he ended up and however far his music traveled past Memphis city limits.
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Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519) — Maximilian
I don't know a great deal about the Holy Roman Empire, if I'm honest, but Maximilian I supporting the spread of printing during his reign catches my attention as a former schoolteacher, because nothing changed education and everyday people's access to ideas quite like the printing press did. Anybody who helped that technology take root, even a few centuries before it fully bloomed, was investing in something that would eventually put books in the hands of children like the ones I taught for 38 years, kids who'd otherwise never have had one of their own. I'm skeptical of a lot of newer technology myself, computers included, but printing is the one invention I'd never grumble about, since it's the whole reason a poor farm family's daughter like me could get an education at all eventually. Modernizing an empire is a big, vague-sounding accomplishment, but supporting the tools that spread learning is the part of it I can actually appreciate in plain, practical terms, same as I'd appreciate anybody who built a schoolhouse instead of just talking about one.
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Maximilian Schell (1930-2014) — Maximilian
Judgment at Nuremberg is heavier subject matter than most of what I watch these days — I lean toward Hallmark movies and old hymns for my evening entertainment — but I understand Maximilian Schell won an Academy Award for his part in it, which tells me he handled some genuinely difficult material with real skill and seriousness rather than shying away from it. There's something to be said for an actor willing to take on hard, uncomfortable history instead of easier, more crowd-pleasing roles, the same way I always respected the substitute teachers willing to take my toughest classroom instead of the easy one. Winning that kind of recognition for serious dramatic work, in a film built around such weighty subject matter, isn't the same as being simply popular; it means his peers judged the work itself to be genuinely excellent. I don't watch pictures like that often, but I have a lasting respect for performers who use their gift on the hard stories instead of only the comfortable ones, because somebody has to be willing to tell them well.
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Angelo Ogbonna (b. 1988) — Angelo
Soccer's never been our sport around Piney Grove — football means something with pads and a huddle here — but I understand Angelo Ogbonna built a real reputation for defensive leadership in England's top league, which even I can appreciate, because defense is the unglamorous work in nearly every sport there is. Nobody grows up dreaming of being praised for stopping things instead of scoring them, same as nobody grows up dreaming of grading spelling tests, but somebody has to do that steady, less-flashy job well or the whole team falls apart. I always had more respect for the quiet, dependable kids in my classroom than the ones showing off, because it's usually the dependable ones holding everything together while nobody's watching closely. Being known specifically for leadership on the defensive end of an Italian footballer's career, in a league that famous, tells me he earned his teammates' trust the hard way, one unglamorous match at a time, the same way you earn a good name in any line of work.
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Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) — Dante
I never made it past a few excerpts of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy myself in my community college night classes, but even secondhand you can tell you're dealing with something built to last — one of the greatest works in all of world literature, still taught and argued over seven hundred years later. That's the kind of staying power I associate with Scripture more than most literature, honestly, something meant to wrestle with the biggest questions a person can ask about right and wrong and what comes after. I always told my third graders that the books worth rereading are the ones that give you something new each time, and I suspect the Divine Comedy is exactly that sort of book for people who've spent a lifetime studying it. It humbles me a little, thinking about a poet writing something that would still matter this deeply centuries past his own lifetime. Most of us are lucky if our words outlast the newspaper column they were printed in, so I try not to take that kind of legacy lightly.
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Enrique Granados (1867-1916) — Enrique
Music that lasts is a funny thing to me — I love old hymns and Patsy Cline myself, nothing fancy, but I understand Enrique Granados's piano suite Goyescas is still considered one of his finest achievements more than a century later, which is its own kind of miracle in a world that forgets songs faster every year. Writing something meant to capture a whole mood or era in sound, the way Goyescas apparently does with its inspiration from Goya's paintings, takes an artist who trusts the slow work of getting small details exactly right rather than chasing whatever's popular that season. I always tell my third graders that the things worth doing usually take longer than you'd like, and I suspect that held true for a composer working out every note of a serious piano suite too. It doesn't surprise me that a piece built with that kind of care outlived its own century. Some things earn their staying power the old-fashioned way, one careful measure or one careful lesson at a time.
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Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) — Marcelo
I've never seen La Dolce Vita myself — foreign films with subtitles aren't exactly the Piney Grove Saturday matinee crowd — but I understand Marcello Mastroianni is considered one of the great leading men of European cinema, and that his work with Fellini in that film and in 8½ still gets studied and admired all these decades later. That kind of staying power tells you something, same as it does with a hymn that's still being sung a hundred years after it was written — if it lasts, there was something true in it. I imagine being the face of a whole era of Italian filmmaking took more discipline than the glamorous photographs from that time let on; anybody who's held a classroom's attention for a full school year knows that looking effortless takes real work underneath. My late husband Rusty liked the old black-and-white pictures more than I ever did, foreign or otherwise, but even I can respect craftsmanship when it's lasted this long without needing to be reintroduced to every new generation.
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Felipe II of Spain (1527-1598) — Felipe
I'll admit kings and Golden Ages are a bit far afield from my usual beat of third graders and county fair columns, but Felipe II's story caught my eye because of El Escorial — a man who spent that kind of effort and money building something meant to outlast him by centuries. There's something almost churchlike in that patience, building for a future you won't personally see, the way we plant trees around here that our grandkids will be the ones to sit under. Presiding over Spain during the height of its Golden Age and being remembered as a major patron of art and architecture tells me he understood that a legacy isn't really about a single reign, it's about what gets left standing afterward for other people to use. I've spent a good part of my own life invested in things — a classroom, a garden, a county paper column — that outlast any one season, and I have real respect for anybody, crown or no crown, who thinks in those longer terms instead of just the here and now.
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Nigel Hawthorne (1929-2001) — Nigel
I don't get out to many pictures these days, but I remember The Madness of King George being the kind of serious, dignified film they don't seem to make as often anymore, and Nigel Hawthorne's performance in it earned him an Oscar nomination for good reason — that's the sort of acting that takes real patience, showing a man's mind slowly coming undone without ever tipping into anything cheap or showy. I've watched a few former students go on to do fine, careful work in whatever field they chose, and there's a similar quality in it: not flashy, just deeply, deeply good at the craft. Being "acclaimed" the way he was means his fellow actors respected him as much as any audience did, which in my experience is usually the more honest measure of somebody's real worth. I like an actor who trusts a quiet scene to hold its own weight instead of reaching for something louder. There's a lesson in that for anybody, honestly — sometimes the strongest performance is the one that doesn't ask you to notice it working.
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Simon Cowell (b. 1959) — Simon
I never had cable long enough to watch much of American Idol, but I heard about it plenty from my grandkids, who used to argue over whether Simon Cowell was being mean or just honest with those young singers. Having stood in front of a classroom of eight-year-olds for 38 years, I can tell you there's a real difference between the two, even if it doesn't always look that way from the outside, and the good teachers — and I'll allow that maybe the good judges too — learn how to be honest without being cruel about it. Building shows that launched that many careers takes a sharp eye for talent most people would've overlooked, which isn't so different from spotting the quiet kid in the back row who turns out to have something. I imagine a man in that line of work has broken a lot of hearts telling the truth, and probably built up a few too. Either way, if you can find real talent and put a spotlight on it, you've done something worthwhile, however sharp your tongue got getting there.
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Colin Powell (1937-2021) — Colin
Colin Powell rose to four-star general and then became the first Black U.S. Secretary of State, and whatever else people argue about regarding any public servant's career, that climb itself, starting where he started and ending up where he ended up, is the part that impresses me most. I taught in a two-room schoolhouse my whole career and watched plenty of children start out with the deck stacked against them in one way or another; the ones who made it furthest were rarely the loudest or the flashiest, they were the steady ones who kept showing up and doing the next right thing even when nobody special was watching. From everything I've read, that steadiness was Powell's whole reputation before it was ever his title — a man known for being reliable and prepared long before he was known for the rank on his shoulder. I don't know the man, obviously, never will, but I know that kind of quiet discipline when its results show up on paper like that. It usually means somebody did the work nobody saw for years before anybody handed them the credit.
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Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) — Neil
Neil Gaiman writes these big, strange books, American Gods and The Sandman among them, that take old myths and weave them into something entirely new and modern, and while that's not exactly my usual reading, one of my grandsons is absolutely wild about his work and has tried, patiently, more than once, to explain the appeal to his old grandmother. What I've come to understand, mostly secondhand, is that Gaiman's real gift is showing people that the old stories, the ones that feel dusty and half-forgotten, still have plenty of life left in them if somebody's willing to look at them slant and ask a new question. I spent thirty-eight years trying to convince eight-year-olds that stories mattered, even old ones, especially old ones, so I have a real soft spot for anybody who manages to make an old tale feel urgent to a brand-new generation. My grandson still can't get me to finish one of the books. But I like knowing they exist, and I like watching him light up over them even more.
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Derek Walcott (1930-2017) — Derek
Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize for poetry and plays out of Saint Lucia, a little island most folks couldn't find on a map, and I think there's something fitting about that, since so much of the best writing I've ever come across in my life came from small, unassuming places rather than the big famous ones everybody already expects greatness from. I'm no poetry scholar, I'll say that plainly, my tastes run more toward the hymnal than Omeros, but I recognize the discipline it takes to make language do more work than it usually does, the way a good preacher can turn a familiar verse into something that hits you fresh on a Sunday you weren't expecting it. Walcott spent a career doing that with an entire region's history and voice, not just his own. It's a reminder I try to pass on to anybody who'll listen: where you're from doesn't put a ceiling on what you're capable of building with what you've got. Sometimes it's exactly the opposite.
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Bradley Walsh (b. 1958) — Bradley
Bradley Walsh built a long career as a British television presenter, best known now for hosting The Chase, which from what I understand is a quiz show where regular folks go up against professional quizzers trying to win some money. I don't get British television out here in Piney Grove, but my daughter showed me a clip on her phone once, and I liked watching somebody whose whole job is putting nervous, ordinary people at ease in front of cameras and a studio audience. I had a boy in my class once, must've been the early nineties, who could talk to absolutely anybody about absolutely anything and make them feel like the most interesting person in the room — never went on to be famous for it, so far as I know, but I think about him every time I see somebody make that gift look easy on television. It's a real skill, putting regular people at their ease in a nervous spot. Not everybody's built for it, and I imagine Walsh has been doing it a good long while because he's genuinely good at it.
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Ian Fleming (1908-1964) — Ian
Ian Fleming created James Bond, and whatever you think of spies and shaken martinis, the man built one of the most successful literary franchises there's ever been, still going strong generations after he first put pen to paper. I never had much use for that kind of book myself — give me a good clean mystery or a Western over gadgets and glamour any day — but I taught third grade too long not to recognize what makes a story stick with people across that many decades. It isn't really the gadgets. It's that Fleming gave readers somebody who always, always found a way through, no matter how impossible the spot looked at the start of the chapter. Children need stories like that too, just simpler ones, somebody who doesn't give up when things look bad. I used to remind my class of that every time we hit a hard word or a hard problem: the story's not over just because this page is difficult. Fleming built a whole career on that same plain little truth, dressed up fancier than I would have dressed it, but the same truth underneath.
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Ian McKellen (b. 1939) — Ian
Ian McKellen has played two of the most recognizable characters in modern movies, Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Magneto in the X-Men films, and it tickles me that both of them are, in their own ways, older men that younger people look to for guidance, even when Magneto's guidance is a little more complicated than Gandalf's. My grandkids got me to sit through one of those Lord of the Rings movies a few Christmases back, and I'll admit I dozed off twice, but I did notice how much weight McKellen carried in that role just standing still and talking, no flash needed. There's something to be said for an actor who's spent a whole career proving that age and gravity read as strength on screen rather than something to be minimized or covered up. I've got seventy-four years on me now, and I don't mind saying I appreciate a public figure demonstrating that getting older doesn't mean getting smaller in the world's eyes. Some parts, apparently, only an older face and voice can really fill.
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Jordan Fisher (b. 1994) — Jordan
Jordan Fisher has done about three careers' worth of work by the time most folks are settling into their first real job — Broadway's Hamilton, which from what my grandkids tell me is about as demanding a show as exists, and then winning Dancing with the Stars on top of that. I don't know his music the way my grandchildren do, but I do know what it looks like when somebody's actually put the hours in versus somebody who got lucky once and coasted on it, and everything about a résumé like his says hours, not luck. I had a former student, oh, must be fifteen years back now, who could sing like an angel and never did a lick of work to go with the gift, and it never went anywhere for her, which still makes me sad when I think of it. Talent's the seed. Somebody's still got to water it every single day for years before anything worth having grows up out of it. Sounds like Jordan Fisher understood that a lot younger than most people ever do.
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Aidan of Lindisfarne (d. 651) — Aidan
Aidan of Lindisfarne was an Irish monk who ended up founding a priory on a little tidal island off the English coast, and from that one small, isolated place, Christianity took root and spread through a good part of early medieval England. I started keeping bees this past winter, two hives my neighbor gave me, and there's something about watching a whole thriving colony grow out of one small wooden box that keeps making me think of stories like Aidan's — how something enormous and lasting can start from one modest, patient effort in one small place nobody was watching very closely at the time. Lindisfarne isn't a big island. It isn't even always reachable, depending on the tide. But what got planted there rippled out across a whole region and outlasted every person who was there to see it begin. I tell my grandkids that all the time now, mostly because of these bees if I'm honest: you don't need a big stage to start something that matters. You just need to actually start it, and let it do its quiet work.
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Francis Xavier (1506-1552) — Xavier
Francis Xavier helped found the Society of Jesus and then spent the rest of his life carrying his faith clear across the world to places that had never heard of it before, at a time when traveling that far meant real danger and no guarantee you'd ever see home again. I'm Southern Baptist myself, different tradition entirely, but I recognize devotion like that when I see it, the kind that isn't loud about itself, just steady and willing to go wherever the work is needed. I think about that kind of commitment every time one of my former students goes off to do something hard and far from home — mission work, the military, nursing in some corner of the world I couldn't point to on a map. It takes a particular kind of person to leave everything comfortable behind for something they believe matters more than their own comfort does. Xavier's remembered five hundred years later because he lived that all the way through, not just when it was easy. That's a lesson worth sitting with a while, whatever pew you happen to sit in.
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Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) — Theodore
Theodore Roosevelt is the reason so many of our national parks exist today, and I've always thought that was one of the finest things a president ever did with his power — not spending it all on himself, but setting aside land so that regular families a hundred years later, folks who'd never met him and never would, could still walk through a forest that hadn't been carved up and sold off. He was a bundle of energy by every account, reform on top of reform, and he even earned himself a Nobel Peace Prize along the way, but it's the parks that stick with me the most. I think stewardship is a word we've let get fancy when it's really a plain, old idea — you take care of what's been given to you so it's still there for whoever comes next. My granddaddy taught me that about our forty acres, and Roosevelt taught a whole country the same lesson about its wild places. A person's legacy isn't really about what they built for themselves. It's about what they left standing for everybody else.
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Louis Braille (1809-1852) — Louis
Louis Braille lost his sight as a young boy, and instead of that being the end of what anybody expected from him, he grew up and invented an entire system of raised dots that let blind folks read and write for themselves, a gift that's still helping people all over the world find their way into books nearly two hundred years later. I taught third grade for thirty-eight years in a little two-room schoolhouse, and I had more than one child come through my door who the world had already halfway written off before they ever sat down at a desk — a bad hip, a stutter, a family that didn't have two nickels to rub together. The good ones, the ones like Braille, don't let somebody else's low expectations become their own. He didn't wait around for the world to make reading easier for him. He built the tool himself, out of his own darkness, and handed it to everybody who came after. That's the kind of quiet, stubborn faith I try to plant in every child I ever taught: don't wait on permission to fix what's broken. Fix it yourself if you have to.
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Alicia Keys (b. 1981) — Alicia
Alicia Keys can flat play a piano and sing besides, and songs like "Fallin'" and "Empire State of Mind" have made her one of the most honored artists of her time. I'll confess most modern music doesn't have a tune you can hum the way Patsy Cline did, but even I have to admit Keys has real musicianship under all that production — you can hear the training in it, not just the noise. I used to have a student who'd bang out hymns on our old classroom piano with more feeling than skill, and I always told her the feeling mattered more than folks gave it credit for. Keys seems to have both feeling and skill in good measure, which is a rarer combination than people realize. My late husband Rusty used to say talent without discipline is just noise waiting to happen, and I think Keys is proof of what happens when a person has both. Some gifts are worth the fuss made over them.
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Adriana Barraza (b. 1956) — Adriana
Adriana Barraza got an Oscar nomination for her role in "Babel," a Mexican actress holding her own on the biggest stage acting has to offer, and from what I understand she'd been working steadily for years before that recognition finally came calling. I've watched enough Hallmark movies to know good acting when I see it, even if my taste runs a good deal gentler than most of what wins awards these days. There's something satisfying about a career that builds slow and solid instead of all at once — reminds me of teaching, where you don't see what you built in a child until years later, sometimes decades. I had students like that too, the ones who took the long road to get where they were headed and appreciated it more for the wait. Barraza's recognition came later in her career than it does for some, and I suspect that made it sweeter rather than less deserved. Patience earns things flash can't.
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Saint Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) — Chiara
Saint Clare of Assisi founded the Order of Poor Clares back in the thirteenth century and gave up a life of comfort to do it, choosing poverty and devotion on purpose, which is a kind of faith I find easy to admire even from this far away and this many centuries later. I'm a Southern Baptist myself, different tradition altogether, but I've spent enough Sunday mornings in a pew to know real devotion when I read about it. She's remained one of the most revered figures in Christian history for going on eight hundred years now, which tells you something lasted true about what she built. I think about the quiet women in my own church who give more than anybody notices and never ask for credit — Clare seems cut from that same cloth, just with a much bigger legacy attached. My grandmother used to say the ones who give it away freely are usually the ones who end up richest in the ways that count. Clare proved that a long time before my grandmother said it.
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Isabel Wilkerson (b. 1961) — Isabel
Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize and then wrote "The Warmth of Other Suns," a history of the Great Migration that I understand is considered one of the landmark books on the subject. I've taught history to third graders in the simplest terms you can imagine, and I've always believed the big movements of history are really just thousands of small, brave, ordinary decisions stacked up — families packing what they could carry and heading somewhere they hoped would be kinder. Wilkerson had the patience and the skill to go find those stories and set them down properly, which is its own kind of teaching, just done with a much bigger classroom than mine ever was. I think of the families in my own county who came up out of hard times generations back, and how somebody ought to write their stories down too before they're lost. Wilkerson gave a whole chapter of American history the dignity of being remembered right. That's no small thing.
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Bianca Andreescu (b. 2000) — Bianca
Bianca Andreescu won the U.S. Open as a teenager in 2019, the first Canadian ever to take home a Grand Slam singles title, which is the kind of thing that would've made the front page of our little county paper for a solid month if she'd been from around here. I don't know tennis from tiddlywinks, truth be told, but I know what it takes for a young person to walk into a big arena and not fold under all those eyes. I had third graders who couldn't read a spelling test out loud without shaking, so I have a soft spot for anybody who can perform under that kind of pressure at any age, let alone as a teenager on the world's stage. My advice for young folks with a gift is always the same, whether it's tennis or times tables: practice till it's boring, then go be brave anyway. Sounds like Andreescu did exactly that, and the trophy proves it.
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Bianca Jagger (b. 1945) — Bianca
Bianca Jagger has spent decades now campaigning on human rights and the environment, which is a longer stretch of steady devotion to a cause than most folks manage, and she came to it from Nicaragua originally before her name got known the world over. I don't follow the ins and outs of every cause somebody takes up, but I do respect a person who picks something bigger than themselves and sticks with it past the point where it's fashionable. I had a former student who became something of an activist herself, always writing me about one cause or another, and I used to tell her the same thing I'd tell Bianca Jagger if she ever wandered into my kitchen: conviction is worth more when it costs you something to keep it. Seems like Jagger's kept at it a long time, well past when the cameras cared. That's the kind of staying power I was always trying to teach in a two-room schoolhouse, in my own small way.
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Greta Gerwig (b. 1983) — Greta
Greta Gerwig directed "Lady Bird" and "Barbie," two movies about growing up and figuring out who you are, and from what I hear she's become one of the leading filmmaking voices of her whole generation. I'll admit I haven't seen either all the way through — my granddaughter made me watch bits of "Barbie" on her phone and I laughed more than I expected to. There's something to be said for a woman who takes something folks think is silly, like a doll, and finds the real feeling underneath it. I spent thirty-eight years trying to get third graders to find the feeling underneath a story too, so I recognize the instinct even if the venue's different. My advice to any young person with a gift like that has always been the same: don't let anybody tell you your way of seeing things doesn't count just because it's not the way they'd do it. Gerwig clearly didn't listen to anybody who told her that, and look what she made.
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Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) — Iris
Iris Murdoch wrote novels and did serious thinking about philosophy both, which always impresses me, because I could barely grade papers and can a garden at the same time. She wrote "The Sea, the Sea," which won the Booker Prize, one of the big honors in that line of work, and she spent her whole career wrestling with big questions about goodness and how a person ought to live. I never had the schooling she had — my own degree took night classes and four kids underfoot — but I've always believed the smartest people are the ones still asking whether they're being good, not just clever. That was Murdoch, from what I've read. Makes me think of a former student of mine who went on to study philosophy at the university and used to write me letters full of questions I couldn't half answer. I imagine Murdoch would've liked her. Some minds just keep working at the hard questions their whole lives, and the world's better for it.
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Josephine Baker (1906-1975) — Josephine
I had a student once, back in the seventies, who could sing the paint off a wall and never got the chance this country owed her — Josephine Baker's story always makes me think of her. Baker left the segregated South of the mind, if not quite the place, and became a star clean across the ocean in France, of all things, when her own country wasn't ready to see her fully. She danced, she sang, and when the war came she didn't sit it out — she worked for the French Resistance, which took a spine I don't know I'd have had. Later they laid her to rest in the Panthéon, an honor about as high as France gives anybody. I think about how far a person has to go sometimes just to be seen plain. My students who had to work twice as hard for half the credit always come to mind with a story like hers. She earned every bit of it, and then some, the long way around.
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Adele (b. 1988) — Adele
Now here's one I can actually get behind without any grumbling about the music these days not having a tune you can hum — Adele has a voice you can hum along to from the very first bar, and her chart-topping albums '21' and '25' proved a whole lot of other people feel the same way I do. Multiple Grammy wins, globally beloved, and from what I can tell she got there the old-fashioned way, with a genuinely powerful voice and real songs, not a bunch of noise dressed up with flashing lights. I still love my Patsy Cline and the old hymns best, that's never going to change at my age, but I'll admit I've caught myself humming an Adele song while I'm out weeding the garden more than once, and I don't feel one bit bad about it either. There's something to be said for an artist who can reach an old woman in Piney Grove, Arkansas and a teenager on the other side of the world with the exact same song. That's a rare gift, and I hope she knows to be grateful for it, same as I try to be grateful for mine.
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Naomi Klein (b. 1970) — Naomi
I'll admit Naomi Klein writes about things well outside my usual reading — globalization and climate change, with books like 'No Logo' and 'This Changes Everything' that folks tell me were genuinely influential in how people think about those subjects. I've got eleven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren now, and whatever a body thinks about the particulars of any of that, I do find myself thinking more and more about what kind of world gets left for all of them once I'm gone, same as I imagine a lot of grandmothers my age do these days. Writing books serious enough to actually shift how people talk about big, complicated subjects takes a particular kind of persistence, the same persistence I tried to teach in my own small classroom for thirty-eight years — you don't change anybody's mind by shouting once, you change it slowly, with real evidence, laid out patiently enough that people can actually follow along and come to their own conclusion. Whatever else is true, that kind of patient, serious work deserves respect on its own terms.
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Naomi Watts (b. 1968) — Naomi
Naomi Watts is an actress known for 'Mulholland Drive' and 'The Impossible,' celebrated for her range across independent and mainstream film both, which tells me she never let herself get boxed into just one kind of picture, small or big. I had a girl in my third-grade class once, quiet as anything at her desk, who ended up being the most versatile student I ever taught, good at her arithmetic and her reading and even winning the county spelling bee besides — never let herself get pigeonholed into being 'the quiet one' or 'the smart one,' just kept being good at whatever was put in front of her. That's what this reminds me of, honestly. Range isn't the same thing as talent, though people mix the two up all the time; range is choosing not to settle into the one thing that's easiest just because it's already working for you. I've always had more respect for the students, and I suppose the actresses, who keep stretching into something new rather than resting comfortably on what they've already proven they can do.
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Eugénie de Montijo (1826-1920) — Eugenie
Now, French empresses aren't exactly the topic I know best, sitting out here on forty acres in the Ozarks, but I did some reading on Eugénie de Montijo, and she was Empress consort of the French, remembered as a patron of the arts and fashion during the Second French Empire. That's about as far a cry from my own classroom as a life could be, and I won't pretend I have some deep personal connection to it the way I do with a lot of these profiles. But I will say this — every era needs somebody willing to support the artists and the beautiful, useless things that don't feed anybody but feed something in people all the same, and it sounds like that was her role in her particular time and place. I taught plenty of children over the years who had a real gift for drawing or music that had nothing to do with reading or arithmetic, and I always tried to make room for it in my classroom, because somebody has to notice that kind of talent and encourage it, even when it doesn't put supper on the table directly. Different century, similar instinct, I suppose.
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Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) — Penelope
I went back to night classes for my associate's degree while I was raising four children and teaching third grade full time, so I have a soft spot for anybody who does their best work later than folks expect. Penelope Fitzgerald won the Booker Prize for her novel 'Offshore,' and from what I understand she came to real literary recognition later in life than most writers do, admired for prose that's precise and full of wit rather than flashy for its own sake. There's a particular kind of patience required to keep at something, quietly, for years, without the world paying much attention yet, and I recognize that patience because it's the same patience it took me to finish my own schooling in fits and starts around everything else life demanded of me. Precision is a word I'd use for good teaching too, honestly — the best lessons aren't the loudest ones, they're the ones built carefully, word by word, until they actually land. I imagine that's what good, precise prose takes as well. Sometimes the quiet, careful work just needs a little more time to get noticed, and that's alright.
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Ruby Bridges (b. 1954) — Ruby
I taught third grade for thirty-eight years, so when I read about Ruby Bridges, I can't help but picture her the way I'd picture any six-year-old walking into my own classroom — small, scared probably, brave in that particular way children are brave without fully knowing what bravery even means yet. She was the first Black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the American South, at six years old, which is an age when most children are worried about whether they'll get picked for kickball, not carrying the weight of a whole country's ugliness on their small shoulders. I taught plenty of children who had a hard start in life, and it made me fiercely protective of them in a way that never quite went away, even after all these years. Bridges later founded a foundation promoting tolerance, which tells me that little girl grew up and decided to spend her life making sure other children had it easier than she did. That's the lesson I'd want any of my own students to take from her story — what you survive, you can turn around and make gentler for somebody else.
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Beverly Johnson (b. 1951) — Beverly
Beverly Johnson was the first Black woman ever to grace the cover of American Vogue, and I want you to sit with that for a second the way I had to when I first read it — an entire industry, and it took until her for that door to open. I taught third grade for thirty-eight years in a little rural school, and if there's one thing that stays with you doing that kind of work, it's how much it matters who a child gets to see and believe they could become. Miss Johnson opening that door meant some little girl somewhere got to look at a magazine and see herself in it for the first time, which is worth more than any fashion spread. I've got a granddaughter who's mentioned Miss Johnson's name to me before, more clued in on these things than her grandmother. First is a hard, lonely word to carry, and I admire anybody who carried it well enough that the door stayed open behind them.
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Beverly Sills (1929-2007) — Beverly
Beverly Sills was one of the great coloratura sopranos, they say, before she went on to run arts organizations later in her life, which I find nearly as impressive as the singing itself. Most folks are lucky to be excellent at one thing across a whole career; she managed two, back to back, first the voice and then the steady, less glamorous work of keeping the arts alive for everybody coming up behind her. That second act reminds me of my own move from the classroom into writing this little column for the county paper — you don't stop having something to give just because the first job's done. I don't know opera from a hole in the ground, if I'm honest, my music runs more toward Patsy Cline and the old hymns, but I know dedication when I read about it. Passing along what you know, the way she must have done for younger singers, that's the real inheritance, more than any voice ever was.
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Paula Patton (b. 1975) — Paula
Paula Patton's been in some pictures I actually have heard of — that Mission Impossible one my grandkids made me watch, and Precious, which is a hard picture but an important one, from what I understand. She's known for range, being able to do the big action stuff and the serious dramatic stuff too, and that's not nothing. I had a student once, years back, who could switch from being the class clown to the most serious little debater you ever saw in the span of a recess bell, and I always thought that kind of range in a person was a gift, not a trick. Miss Patton apparently has that same gift, just with cameras pointed at her instead of a spelling test. I don't go to the picture shows much anymore — the drive into town's gotten longer as I've gotten older, or maybe the town's just further than it used to be — but I appreciate hearing about performers who can do more than one thing well. That's rarer than folks give it credit for.
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Irene Dunne (1898-1990) — Irene
Irene Dunne got nominated for the Academy Award five times and never won one, which the more I think about it the more it bothers me, because from everything I've read she could do comedy and drama both, and that kind of range is rare as hen's teeth. Reminds me of a student I had, oh, must've been the class of '82, a little girl who could sing and do arithmetic and never got picked for a single solo — some folks just don't get the recognition their gift deserves, not on this earth anyway. Miss Dunne worked through what they call Hollywood's golden age, and I imagine that took its own kind of grit, being a woman making a career in a business that wasn't exactly handing out fairness. I've got my hives out back keeping me busy this winter, and even the bees know some of the best workers never get thanked properly. Don't let that stop you from doing good work anyway — that's the moral, if there is one.
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Glenn Close (b. 1947) — Glenn
Glenn Close has been nominated for the Academy Award eight times now, which is a number that ought to embarrass whoever keeps the trophy away from her, though I imagine she's made her peace with it better than I would've. Eight times is a career, not a lucky break — that's showing up and doing the work again and again, which reminds me of the substitute teaching I did before I got my own classroom, years of proving yourself before anybody handed you the thing you'd earned. I don't watch much of what passes for movies these days, prefer my Hallmark channel where things end nice and tidy, but I've caught enough of Miss Close's work over the years on the television to know real talent when I see it. Eleven grandchildren have tried to get me interested in all manner of modern actresses, and I tell them, find me one with that kind of staying power first. Some things are worth waiting on. She's proof persistence outlasts flash, every single time.
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Bernard Cornwell (b. 1944) — Bernard
Bernard Cornwell writes those Sharpe books, the historical fiction ones, and I'll tell you, I had a student back in my third-grade days — no, not reading Sharpe at eight years old, don't be silly, but a boy named Petey who grew up and became the reader of the family, and I think of him every time somebody makes a whole career out of good, solid storytelling like Mr. Cornwell has. Seems like he's spent a good long while writing history dressed up as adventure, and there's nothing wrong with that, not one thing. I read more Westerns and Hallmark than war novels myself, but I respect a man who can hold a reader's attention across that many books, that many years. My grandkids tell me some of what passes for a story nowadays doesn't have a beginning, middle, or end you can follow, and I believe them. A storyteller who can keep folks turning pages for decades is doing something old-fashioned and right. That's a lesson worth remembering: good bones in a story never go out of style.
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Lawrence Taylor (b. 1959) — Lawrence
Football I understand a good deal better than fashion or foreign cinema, since half my former students' fathers coached Friday nights around here, and Lawrence Taylor's reputation as one of the most dominant defensive players in the game's history is the kind of thing that gets repeated at every barbershop and diner table I've ever sat in. Being a linebacker means doing the hard, physical, often thankless work of stopping somebody else's plan before it ever gets started, which isn't glamorous the way scoring is, but it's the difference between a good team and a great one. I always had a soft spot in my classroom for the kids who'd quietly do the unglamorous job well — clean up without being asked, help a slower reader without making a show of it — because that's usually where the real character shows itself. Being remembered as dominant at that particular, unglamorous position, decades on, tells me he did something genuinely rare and hard, sustained over a long career, not just one big flashy moment that got lucky.
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Ralph Lauren (b. 1939) — Ralph
I don't have much use for high fashion out here — a good pair of overalls and church clothes cover most of my needs — but there's something almost biblical, parable-like, about Ralph Lauren building one of the most recognized clothing brands in the world starting from a single tie collection. That's the mustard seed story if I ever heard a secular version of one: something small, sold with real conviction, growing into something enormous over time. I've watched a few of my own former students start with next to nothing — a little garden stand, a small sewing business — and build it patiently into something that fed their whole family, and I imagine the instincts aren't so different at any scale, just the zeros at the end of it. Building a whole recognizable brand and aesthetic out of one modest idea takes more discipline than people give fashion credit for, especially from the outside looking in the way I am. There's a lesson in there for anybody starting small: small isn't the same thing as insignificant.
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Howard Schultz (b. 1953) — Howard
I'm not much of a coffee-shop person myself — a percolator and a kitchen table have always suited me fine — but I respect what Howard Schultz built with Starbucks, turning one idea into a business you can find in nearly every town in this country now. What catches my attention more than the business itself, though, is the philanthropy toward veterans and youth programs, because my late husband Rusty was a Vietnam vet, and I know firsthand how much difference real, sustained support can make for a man who came home carrying more than he ever talked about. Building something that large takes drive, but choosing to put real money and attention behind veterans afterward takes a different kind of character, the kind that remembers who else needs looking after once you've made it. I always told my students that what you do once you've got something is the real test of who you are, more than how you got it in the first place. From what I understand, Schultz has passed that particular test more than once.
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Alfred the Great (849-899) — Alfred
Alfred the Great is my kind of historical figure, if I'm honest, because defending his kingdom from the Vikings gets all the dramatic attention, but it's the education and law part of his legacy that speaks to an old schoolteacher's heart. Anybody in a position of real power who spends part of it building schools and fairer laws instead of just fighting wars understood something a lot of leaders still miss — that what you build afterward matters as much as what you survive. I spent 38 years in a two-room schoolhouse trying to give farm kids a fighting chance at something better than what they were born into, and I have real respect for a king who apparently thought the same way on a much larger scale, promoting learning even while defending his own borders. Being remembered nearly 1,200 years later as one of England's most revered early rulers isn't about the battles alone; it's about what got left behind for the people who came after him to build on. That's the kind of legacy worth aiming for, crown or classroom.
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Gwen Verdon (1925-2000) — Gwen
I'll confess up front that modern dancing isn't my particular cup of tea, but I know talent and hard work when I read about it, and this Broadway dancer had both in spades, winning Tony after Tony and lighting up the stage in a way people still talk about. It reminds me of a girl I taught back in the seventies, quiet as a mouse at her desk but the second she got up to perform in the school pageant, she turned into somebody else entirely — all that energy had just been waiting for the right stage. My late husband Earl used to say some folks are born to be looked at, and it isn't vanity, it's just where their gift happens to sit. This performer clearly had that kind of electricity, the kind you can't teach in any classroom, only recognize when it walks through your door. I imagine there's comfort in finding, early, exactly what you were built to do, and precious few of us are lucky enough to get that clear an answer.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) — Ruth
I am an old-fashioned woman in most every way, but thirty-eight years teaching poor kids in a two-room schoolhouse taught me to root hard for anybody who got a rough start and made something of it anyway. This Supreme Court justice spent her whole career working so women would be treated fairly under the law, and by the time she was through, she'd changed things for generations of girls who'll never know her name but will live easier lives for her having lived. I had a student back in the eighties, a bright little girl who used to say she wanted to be a lawyer, and folks in town laughed at her some. I always wonder what became of her. Whatever a person thinks about the particulars, there's no arguing that a life spent opening doors for others is a life well spent, and that's a lesson I've tried to pass on to every child who ever sat in my classroom, girl or boy.
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Edith Wharton (1862-1937) — Edith
I never did finish my bachelor's degree, raising four kids and teaching third grade the whole time, so I have a particular fondness for anybody who broke new ground doing hard, careful work most folks weren't expecting from a woman of her day. This author became the first woman ever handed a Pulitzer for her fiction, writing sharp, clear-eyed novels about the wealthy society she'd been born into, seeing it plainer than the people living inside it ever could. That's a gift, being able to see your own world honestly instead of just comfortably. I used to tell my students that the best writers are really just the best noticers, and it sounds like she noticed everything. My mother kept a worn copy of one of her books on the shelf my whole childhood, though I confess I only got around to reading it properly after I retired. Better late than never, I suppose — a lesson I try to remember every time I think it's too late to learn something new myself.
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Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) — Ethel
There's a whole family of Barrymores in the acting business, but this one was the matriarch of it, and reading about her long career on stage and screen reminded me of the grandmothers who used to run our little community theater productions back home — the ones everybody deferred to without anybody ever quite saying why. She earned an Academy Award to go with decades of respect from her peers, which in my experience is the harder thing to earn. I had a student once, a shy little girl named Etta Mae, who used to recite poems in front of the class shaking like a leaf, and I always told her that stage fright never fully leaves the good ones, it just gets dressed up nicer. I imagine Miss Barrymore knew that feeling every night of her career and walked out anyway. My late husband Rusty used to say the bravest people aren't the ones without nerves, just the ones who go on regardless. Seems like she did that for a very long time, and did it well.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) — Franklin
I've taught enough scared children to know what steady looks like when everything around it is shaking, and from what I've read, that's what this president gave the country. He came to office with the whole nation flat on its back from the Depression, and then had to see it through a world war on top of that, and folks say his voice on the radio alone calmed kitchens all across America the way a good teacher's voice can calm a rowdy classroom after recess. I think of a boy I had once, back in the seventies, whose daddy lost the farm and who came to school so anxious he couldn't sit still — what that child needed wasn't a lecture, it was somebody calm standing at the front of the room saying we're going to get through this together. That's leadership, plain and simple, whether it's a third-grade classroom or a nation. My grandmother lived through those years and never forgot the relief of it. There's a lesson there about steadiness being its own kind of courage, and I don't reckon that one ever goes out of style.
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Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) — Herbert
Herbert Hoover gets remembered mostly for being president, and not always kindly at that, but what struck me reading up on him was the part before the presidency, when he led massive relief efforts that fed millions of people after the First World War. That's the kind of quiet, unglamorous good work that doesn't make it into most textbooks the way the presidency does, and it reminds me a little of the extra jobs I've taken on over the years — selling preserves and eggs at the farmers' market, nothing anybody writes down in a history book, but it keeps folks fed all the same, on a smaller scale. Feeding millions of hungry people after a war is the kind of achievement that ought to outweigh whatever came after it, in my book. I think about that with my own estranged son too, some days — that the good a person did once doesn't stop being good just because what came later got complicated. That's a lesson I'm still learning myself, at seventy-four.
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Sidney Poitier (1927-2022) — Sidney
Sidney Poitier was the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, and everything I've ever read about him says he carried that honor, and every role before and after it, with a dignity that people still talk about today. I had a student, a little boy, back in the seventies, quiet and dignified in that same unusual way for a child that age, and I've thought of him more than once reading up on Mr. Poitier for this column. Dignity's an old-fashioned word, I know, but I don't know a better one for what it takes to be first at something under a spotlight that isn't always kind, and to make it look like grace instead of struggle. My church has talked about him in sermons before, believe it or not, as an example of doing hard things the right way. That's the kind of legacy worth teaching to grandchildren, and I intend to, the next chance I get one to sit still long enough to listen.
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Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) — Stanley
Stanley Kubrick directed that space picture, 2001, the one my son-in-law is always going on about, and from what I gather the man was famous for being meticulous almost to a fault — reshooting things over and over till they were exactly right. I never had the patience for that kind of perfectionism myself, not with four kids and a classroom full of eight-year-olds needing something different every five minutes, but I respect it in a person who's got the luxury of that kind of focus. Bold storytelling, they call his films, and I suppose that's true even if I couldn't sit through the whole thing myself — the Hallmark channel suits me better these days. Still, there's something to be said for a person who refuses to turn in less than their best, even when nobody but him could tell the difference. I've always told my students, and my own children too, that doing a thing right when you could've gotten away with doing it fast is its own kind of character.
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Roy Rogers (1911-1998) — Roy
Roy Rogers was known as the King of the Cowboys, a singing cowboy and film star who charmed generations of families with wholesome Western films and music, and I'll tell you, my own kids grew up on his kind of picture on a Saturday afternoon television set, back before everything got so complicated on the screen. There's something to be said for entertainment that a whole family could sit down and watch together without anybody having to leave the room during the good parts. I had students over the years whose grandparents grew up idolizing him, and by the time I was teaching, their own grandbabies were still humming some of those old cowboy tunes without knowing quite where they came from. That's a kind of legacy that doesn't announce itself loudly, it just keeps quietly getting passed down at kitchen tables. Wholesome isn't a word people use much anymore, like it's an insult, but I think Rogers proved it can be a whole career.
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Russell Wilson (b. 1988) — Russell
Russell Wilson has been a Super Bowl-winning NFL quarterback and is known just as much for his leadership on the field as for his charitable work with children's hospitals, and I have to say the second part is the one that stuck with me more than any highlight reel. I taught third grade for thirty-eight years, and there's a particular kind of person who shows up for sick kids not because a camera's rolling but because it matters, and it's not something you can fake for very long. A quarterback's job is leadership on a football field, sure, but the real leadership, the kind that lasts, usually shows up in what a person does when nobody's grading them for it. I've had students who grew up to do good, quiet things nobody wrote articles about, and I think of them the same way I think of a public figure who keeps showing up for children's hospitals long after the cameras have found somebody else to follow.
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Vernon Davis (b. 1984) — Vernon
I don't know much about professional football, having raised my four on a schoolteacher's salary where extra channels on the television weren't in the budget, but I do know something about young people who use whatever platform they're given to help others, and that's what caught my eye about this tight end. Making the Pro Bowl is one kind of achievement, plenty of athletes manage that, but turning around and putting real effort behind arts and STEM programs for children is another thing entirely, and it's the harder one to sustain once the cheering stops. I had a former student go on to some athletic success in college years back, and what I remember proudest isn't the trophies, it's that he came back every summer to help coach the younger kids at the rec league for free. That's the real test of character, what a person does with their good fortune once it's arrived. Seems like this young man passed that test, and I hope he keeps at it.