Dear Bethesda Elementary

a real letter I sent this year. I graduated in 1979

June 17, 2022

Dear Bethesda Elementary teachers,

I know these past two years have been extraordinarily draining. I suspect some of you all have thought about changing careers. Is any of this even worth it, you ask?

I attended Bethesda Elementary from 1972-1979, except for one lonely year in California thanks to my Dad’s job. I walked to school from Park Lane each day, almost a mile carrying a Raggedy Ann lunchbox with a glass thermos. Which I broke, of course.

Those were magical years, years of color and social change, warmth and confusion. Mrs. Gaillard was the principal and the first real African American presence in my life. She was a gentle and cheerful woman with glasses as big as saucers.

The Great Society had hit its stride, milk for a nickel. Later 7 cents. Boxy, square televisions were mounted in the corner of each classroom. We gathered under them on little rugs to watch Zoom and The Electric Company and to see rockets propel towards the Moon.

The library was an array of colors top to bottom, thin books a kid could carry. Bill Peet, William Pène du Bois, My Father’s Dragon, Harriet the Spy. I can still smell them all.

The blue mimeograph machine in the office churned out worksheets with boxes and numbers and trains for us to color in and fill out. Hand cranked pencil sharpeners on the wall were our mainstay. Fancy teachers had electric ones on their desks and would let you use them if you asked nicely. Maybe that’s still the same.

Mrs. Phelps gave us cookies every Friday, and Mrs. Jeweler would get out her guitar and sing us songs if we had been good. She was the daughter of Jewish immigrants. One day my friend, Ian, drew a swastika on his hand for fun, and Mrs. Jeweler looked him straight in the eyes and said, “That’s an ugly symbol. Wash it off.” There are some things that stick with a kid.

But Ian was like that. He once flicked a piece of banana at the cafeteria ceiling and it stuck. To my knowledge, it’s still there. One time, for no reason at all, he scratched the blackboard not with his fingernails, but with his buck teeth. Excruciating.

This was the latchkey era, and parents did not really know what they were doing. Ian and I got into so much trouble after school, usually involving some sort of spray paint and lighter fluid. We used to play the Beatles records backwards hoping to hear what happened to Paul.

Mrs. Alexander – who played the bagpipes, by the way, who plays bagpipes? – did not make fun of me when I told her I had seen ghosts. There are some things that stick with a kid.

When we got back from California, I was a scared, confused little guy, and at my first recess I punched David Bouvé right in the jaw. I remember sobbing in Mrs. Gaillard’s office and she hugged me and told me to take it easy on myself and welcome back. And to stop hitting my friends. David, in case you are wondering, recovered just fine and is now a retired Navy Captain.

I’m 55 now and tired. Chronic illness and the pandemic have me looking back into my life to find those places where there has been light and love. Those teachers loved us, they really loved us. I suspect that has not changed. The blackboards and mimeographs may be gone, but I am sure you each enter your classrooms with the same joy and dedication that greeted me each day.

So sure, I learned my multiplication tables and how to write capital Q’s in cursive. But if you are like me, you don’t write capital Q’s in cursive anymore. No one does. That’s not what sticks with a kid.

Is it worth it? Have the past two years been worth it? Ask your students in 50 years. But I think you already know.

With gratitude for all you do,

Chris Hutchinson

Blacksburg, VA