Recently the former superintendent of the school system where I went to elementary and high shool passed away.   Tom was beloved by many... including myself.  

He was a man who KNEW intimately the value of an education.  He came from very humble beginnings himeslf - he was raised in what we call a "boys home" today but which was, in reality, an orphanage.  He joined the Navy at 17 - during WWII.   He went to college after the Navy and became a teacher and a coach.  Eventually he became an administrator but he was, always, first an educator.  

He KNEW the students in his schools.  Individually and collectively.  Close to 2000 of us at any one time.   He remembered us long after we left the school system as well.   If students had a problem or needed help his office door was open... and we knew it.  When we got to high school many of us were excused from Study Hall to go help in the central office because Tom felt it was better for us to be involved in our school than it was for the school to pay people to do the same thing.   

Snow days for a couple of inches of snow?   Not on a bet.  Tom figured if he could get to the school safely there was no reason to cancel school and we all needed every day of instruction that could be packed into a school year.   

I went to school with his children... and with his step-children.   When his son-in-law passed away in 2004 after 17 years of fighting Glioblastoma Multiforme we all cried - my brothers and I more than some because we were watching the same disease kill our mother.   When our mother passed away a couple of months later Tom came to the funeral and I remember just looking at him and bursting into tears.   

Tom is one of the people who dragged me, occasionally kicking and screaming, into understanding the value of an education.  He encouraged me to keep learning.  He helped me to find ways to pay for that "fancy education" of mine.  I doubt I would be where I am today without his occasional pokes and prods long after I left school.  

He retired in 1981...  30 years later he passed away... and for every one of those 30  years he remembered the students who had passed through "his" school in the 16 years he was the Superintendent.   Thousands of us.  He knew many of our children as well.   

Tom...   you will be remembered fondly by thousands of men and women whose lives you helped to shape.   Some of us more than others.  Wakan Tanka nici un.