This One is a Punch to the Gut. I Am So Fortunate to Have Had the Mentorship of a Legend...a Sage...a One-of-a-Kind Genius.

Sue sent me a message yesterday. Gay Rapley passed away. I'm in shock, a bit disillusioned, and so terribly sad about her leaving. So much of my teaching career is owed to her and it doesn't seem possible that her zest and pizazz are no longer with us.

She was the Queen of being a free spirit. Her influence on decades of young people cannot be measured. As I've reached out to alumni, they've said, "She's the reason I became the person I am. She invested so much in us."

In 1996, I did my student teaching at the J. Graham Brown School and was mentored by Sue McV, but also taken under the wings of Gay Rapley. She, Neysa, and Sue were the high school English Department and when I joined in 1997, Gay was my mentor, my laughter, my vision for what is possible, and my hope. She was the English teacher who wore feather boas with Keds, pushed all the boundaries of what young people could do in high school, corrected my grammar, and who offered Maude-like humor and energy with eccentricity, brilliance, and love (we showed Harold & Maude every year in her honor). Not a day went by when I didn't learn something new from her. Her retirement crushed us, but she deserved it, and my colleagues and I did all we could to live up to her reputation, funk, and joy (yes, she loved to play the role of cynic and doomsday-ist, but that was not the educator who she really was for so many). She was the light of the school.

I can only imagine the life lessons she offered throughout a full career as an English teacher. Her influence on me was always astronomical and I think about her all the time. She retired, moved to Florida, but planted numerous seeds in the human being I am today. Those seeds grew in my time in Kentucky, during my doctoral work in Syracuse, and now as a National Writing Project site director.

I remember after she won teacher-of-the-year, and announced her retirement, that at graduation she locked her keys in the car. After parents and students left, she asked me to go with her to her car for help, but we ended up calling someone to break in. His license plate said, "Pimp-Mobilie" and I always laughed that she was rescued by this kid with that plate, and flipping a feather boa behind her and leaving the Brown for the last time, saying, "Crandall, it's time for a new journey to begin."

She wined and dined me. Said she wanted to be me for Halloween (we swapped clothes and let me borrow a moo-moo), and reminded me that nothing was more important than mentoring and loving students. In her last year, we shared a beautiful student who lost her mother. I remember how delicate Gay was with this student, especially with helping her to keep faith through tragedy, and finding a reason to laugh. She was always an angel on earth.

Here I was, simply starting out. There she was, investing a lifetime and career to this newbie with a wild desire to teach and an ambition to keep the Brown legacy going. She often told me, "You're too ambitious to stay in the profession," and I always hated that. She was right, though. As I witnessed things crumbling with new leadership and national trends, I needed to find a new tract that would allow me to ask additional questions...to push against systems a little more...and to keep my spunk. She was such a wise woman. I like to think that so much of what I do is because of her.

I'm crushed to learn that she no longer with us, and I was sad that she grew distant after her retirement. But I'm always talking to her in my head...in my deepest thinking...and with all I plan for others (because that is who she was).

Gay Rapley was always larger than life (I loved that we had a Rapley-Ripley connection). 

I never thought I'd see a day that I left the Brown School, but when I did, I vowed to keep the Brown School alive in whatever I chose to do. That was Gay. She was so much the heart and soul of the school. The connections I made for a decade after she left was because of everything she modeled. I always wanted to live up to her legacy.

So smart. Often on the edge of outrageous. And such a beautiful human being. I am a better man because of her. Dang...this life thing is rough at times.

This is a punch to the gut that will take some time to process. 

The best years of my life were at the Brown. That place, and its teachers, are extraordinary. Wow.