Denny, all I can say is 'thank you'

Brian Questel
April 10, 2013
363

Denny, all I can say is 'thank you' Call it fate, call it luck or call it whatever. All I know is I am so thankful that chance took the turn it did. In the spring of 2003, I was approaching my final year at the University of Akron. I had left a career behind to return to school and opt for another in teaching. Sitting in a large auditorium on the U of A campus, we had just been handed our student-teaching assignments for the coming year. We had already been told it wouldnt be anywhere we had previously attended school, so imagine my surprise when I opened my envelope and found I would be doing my student teaching at Edgewood Middle School, a mere seven miles from my home. It had to be a mistake, I thought, but this was one time where age worked in my favor. No one, the university assumed (and they were almost right) would still be teaching from my years tripping over myself as a lost seventh- and eighth-grader, so they threw me a bone. Three days later my job with the Wooster Weekly News brought me to Wooster High School to cover the Kiwanis Invitational track meet. Shortly after I arrived, Wooster High girls coach Nikki Reynolds saw me and after a quick greeting, led off with, Denny just left. You just missed him and he wanted to meet you. Denny? Denny who? That wasnt the name of the cooperating teacher I had been assigned by the university. Oakleaf – Denny Oakleaf, said Reynolds. He said you were going to be doing your student teaching with him in the fall. That led to a quick email to my advisor who said the letter was correct, but the good news was that Akron could not have cared less who my cooperating teacher was. To make a long story short, that change had been made at Edgewood when the person I had been assigned approached Oakleaf about making the change and Denny had gracefully agreed to take me on, sight unseen. We knew of each other only by name – he from reading my writing over the years and me, as a history buff, reading about the historical trips that Oakleaf originated as the eighth-grade social studies teacher on the Rainbow Team at EMS. Our paths had never crossed, but oh, what a wonderful happenstance. Seldom, if ever, have I ever been blessed with such good fortune in my entire life. But as I write this it is with a heavy heart because that was a relationship that ended March 27 with Dennys untimely passing. My mentor and friend passed away quickly, returning home in late January in remission from the leukemia that had attacked him late last summer, only to have it return with a fury and take him away from his wife, Sue, and daughters Kara, Kaitlin and Megan. And if I feel he left too soon, that was a feeling clearly evident in the loving words of his daughters at his memorial service. They rejoiced in the memory of his laughter, jokes and guidance, something that students from Wooster over 30-plus years could attest, and the strain of their loss was evident in the tears and cracks in their voices as they gathered their courage to talk about their father to a large gathering in the funeral home. They talked about how he would indulge or play with them without fatigue. They talked about his love for them and Sue, and how fortunate they were to have two parents committed to them as well as each other. They talked about how he cared. That is a story that carries weight with me as well. I met Denny and Rose Jolliff, the Rainbow teams English teacher, on the same August afternoon as they prepared for the 2003-04 school year. The collaboration between the two extended into the classroom, well beyond the historical trip of which both were an integral part. Again, I couldnt have been luckier – both Oakleaf and Jolliff were nominated by their peers and former students and honored as the outstanding teacher in the Wooster district. Both were well deserved, and I saw it first hand. I was required only to be there the first day of school and then check in weekly before beginning my student teaching six weeks into the school year. At the end of the first day, Denny asked if I wanted to come back the next day, which I did. And the next. And the next. Three weeks later, he asked me if I wanted to teach a lesson the following day, which I did. That went well enough he asked a bigger question: Did I want to take over and teach every class? It seemed logical and the obvious answer was yes. For the next 12 weeks, I taught and he observed. But what I appreciated most was not how he opened up his library, lesson plans, overheads and DVDs and videos so that I could survive, but that he was there every period to watch and teach -- me. We had great back and forths in class as he prompted me to explain or expand further on a point, give the definition of a word or simply slow me down. If a student didnt have a question, he would put his hand up and ask, Mr. Questel, what do you think would have happened if .? I had never realized how difficult generating a test was – he taught me. He pointed out a weakness in a lesson plan – and taught me how to improve it. I was encouraged to call parents, handle my own classroom discipline and work through other issues. Some of my classmates complained about never seeing their cooperating teacher or having help. Me? I had someone who wanted me there and was concerned with helping me and teaching me. I had everything I needed. I was also part of preparing the Rainbow Team for its annual Historical Preservation trips, one during the week of Memorial Day and the other the first week after school ended. Denny made sure I was invited to go and I have to admit I hesitated about going on a six-day trip. I reconsidered and that last trip has been etched in my mind as one of the greatest experiences of my life. What made this trip special wasnt just passing through Gettysburg on a bus looking at monuments, which is the hallmark of many tours. The kids dismounted and spent an hour writing in their journals on top of Little Round Top before visiting the battlefield the next day. There was also a science lesson at Sidling Pass in Pennsylvania; an art lesson at Community Bridge in Frederick, Md.; or a somber walk down Bloody Lane at Antietam (where two years later he proudly took me to see the tree that his daughters had planted in his name in the West Woods). There was a history lesson in Harpers Ferry, W.V., where students not only crowded into the fire station that became John Browns Fort and could touch bricks that Brown was certain to have touched with their own hands, but Denny got the man who owns the Kennedy Farm where Brown prepared for his raid to open the farm house for several hundred Edgewood students to walk through and get a real sense of history. In appreciation, Captain South Lynn thanked Edgewood Middle School on a bronze plaque in gratitude for the fundraising students did over nearly two dozen trips Oakleaf and EMS students took. Over $37,000 was raised in that time period, some of which Lynn used to help restore and maintain the Kennedy Farm. Those students who made the trip got to live history – not just read or watch it -- and they became transformed. That is the mark of a great teacher. Ive shed my own tears with Dennys passing and will continue to do so, but he transformed me and so many other students. One not-so-interested eighth-grader shared her thoughts about how Mr. Oakleaf inspired her to get a college degree in history. My love of history has been enhanced by a greater desire to travel so that I could touch and feel and live history so that I can bring that to my students. And I know whom to thank, although words hardly seem enough. But thank you, Denny. Thank you, ever so much, for giving so much of yourself. Thank you.

Denny, all I can say is 'thank you'

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