Legacy

Thinking about what we leave behind, and why it is important...

I am more than a week into retirement from my career as an educator (like you ever retire from teaching?), and I am astounded at the variety and volume of thoughts that come into my head. Without the competition of thoughts about schools and students and teachers and parents, I have been able to contemplate many things; this is a valuable ability for a writer, to be sure. Sitting with a pot of coffee each morning, I have been focused on the idea of legacy, particularly the ones I have received and the one I am leaving.

As I focus on writing, I am also transitioning into life as Grandpa, or as Walker, my grandson, calls me, Peepaw. This dual transition has presented several questions: What kind of thing should I write first? Why didn’t we have more children? When can we give this kid back to his parents? Given the collision of these roles in my psyche, I have been developing a philosophy around the importance of intentionally leaving a legacy to my children, grandchildren, and the world.

Author Chuck Palahniuk once wrote, “The goal isn’t to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.” Given that, it’s funny the kinds of things that are brought to mind when we think about the legacies left to us. These memories begin with my Grandma Doris (Deike) Wood, my maternal grandmother. She played a significant role in shaping me through her example as an educator and a leader. My sister and I would spend a month or so every summer with each of our grandmothers. During these visits, I would attend summer school while Grandma Wood would teach; little did I realize that sitting in a classroom learning how to read wasn’t supposed to be fun. I would work my way through SRA reading boxes in the back of the classroom while grandma taught the kids from the town of Manton, Michigan, how to read and do elementary math; then we would go out to recess and play on playground equipment that would today be viewed as death traps; metal slides that would burn the bottoms of unpanted legs, swings that would propel us tens of feet into the air when we took the inevitable dares to jump from them to see who could fly the farthest, and a geodesic dome of monkey bars that, for a 2nd or 3rd grader seemed like climbing Mt. McKinley. After undertaking this survival training, we would come into the cafeteria, where the to-die-for tuna casserole was made from scratch.

Here, I learned about learning and service, reading and fun, and that climbing that dome of aluminum to the top was a sign of bravery that conveyed an outsized portion of playground “cred.” The seeds of my grandmother's legacy were planted in that classroom, on that playground, and sitting at the cafeteria tables. I would later raise my children, always mindful of their observing me while I taught other people’s children. It was in dealing with my students and the teachers in schools that I led that I was able to convey much of a legacy to my children–to give because we had things that others didn’t, to love even when exasperated, and always to try to uplift others even while holding them accountable to my expectations.

We would go from one grandmother’s home (my mother’s parents were divorced when she was five) and land at the other’s (my Grandpa Kline died when I was seven) so my parents could have a couple of months each summer to do work around the house and remember what time was like before my sister and I arrived. Grandma Kline’s home, surrounded on three sides by corn fields in Woodland, Indiana, offered a different legacy-receiving opportunity. During our weeks in Woodland, I learned how to make scrambled eggs, shoot a BB gun, sew, and drive a riding lawn mower. While Manton offered small-town adventures like hikes to the post office and the IGA and down to the lake to go fishing for perch, Woodland provided the opportunity to shoot at starlings that were ruining our sweet corn and at frogs, who were simply the unfortunate victims of a ten-year-old boy with a BB gun. Grandma Kline allowed me to learn how to deal with a level of freedom I didn’t have anywhere else; indeed, I learned how to take on responsibility in light of freedom, which was crucially important for me to understand as I raised my own family and, later, as I led two high schools.

In addition to teaching me the importance of education and responsibility, my grandmothers emphasized the importance of the church and faith. Both were involved in their communities of faith and were glad to involve me and my sister when we visited. I learned about serving others and the value of prayer from both of them. We would go to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Woodland and spend mornings cleaning the church, a simple act of service that communicated the importance of the church and service and God and His people. This, too, was a foundational legacy that I would build on later.

I have been focusing on the influence that my grandmothers had on me, though I do not do this because of any neglect by my grandfathers but because I did not have much time with them. Circumstances we have no control over often have as much to do with the legacies we leave as anything else. Grandpa Kline was, according to his children, a stern man, though an exceedingly competent one who was also an artist at heart; it was a great misfortune to me that just as I was coming to an age during which I could know him, he died of a heart attack. He and I share many similarities: a passion for our families, a love of good tobacco, and an artistic bent that came out in his paintings and in my words. Even with these common qualities, Grandpa Kline’s legacy has broadly been interpreted for me because we didn’t have much time together.

The same can be said of my Grandpa Deike, my mother’s father, a music teacher, a band and orchestra conductor, and an instrumentalist of some note. I play the violin in no small part because he did. Indeed, my lifelong love of all kinds of music can be attributed to him. He and my Grandma Jean, whom he married after divorcing my grandmother Doris, were gracious hosts every time we got to see them, though these visits were usually just for a few hours during a holiday or a weekend with my parents. I think I only spent the night in their home once, after Anne and I were married and were traveling to see our families the summer after we were married. Another legacy left to me is the understanding that families are complex, but complexity met with love can be worthwhile.

I am setting out to articulate for my children, grandchildren, and you the elements and beliefs that make up my legacy. These writings will examine who I have strived to become and what I hope others take away from knowing me. Even so, I hope you will find occasion to consider what you give and leave to the world. We all leave prints along our journey here; it is working to ensure those prints are worth following, which creates a legacy.