Like many, Friday, December 14 will remain etched in my memory for years to come.
It goes without saying that the tragic loss of life in Connecticut weighs heavily on people of good conscience around the globe, especially those among us who are parents.
The courage displayed by the children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, combined with the fact that Dec. 14, 2012, was, for me, the date a dream from my childhood was realized – the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – inspired me to want to share a personal tribute to a teacher who truly stirred a young mind. Because teachers are a treasure that too often are taken for granted once a student graduates into the ‘real’ world.
Mrs. Lesar was my third grade teacher. She was young, vibrant, excited to share a passion for learning with her charges. And in May 1979, she forever changed my life.
I grew up in a small mining community in northern Canada. There was little to do for entertainment except play street hockey during the warm days or play ice hockey during the long winter months. That and go to the movies.
In May of 1979, my mind was still obsessed with a film I’d seen two years earlier – a little space opera from some guy named George Lucas. I had an impressive collection of Star Wars toys and action figures and I was constantly dreaming about what glorious adventures would arrive a year from then, when The Empire Strikes Back would help usher in the 1980s.
Mrs. Lesar knew that many of her students were fascinated with the Wars. And so, that spring, she decided to start taking our class outside near the end of each school day to read to us. The book was a fanciful tale called The Hobbit.
For the better part of six weeks, as the harsh northern climate retreated, surrendering to the increasing temperatures that helped turn the lawn a lush green, caused the tulips in the school’s small garden to bloom and the coaxed the leaves of the large maple tree outside the main entrance from their winter cocoons, this young woman sat on a chair and read to us from a gorgeous, large, illustrated book.
I can’t speak for my fellow students, but I know that the adventure of Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and the not-so-always-merry dwarves he chose to help retake their home from Smaug, a vile, greedy dragon, captivated me.
As the spring flourished and the good earth around us produced plant life that a Hobbit would surely cherish, I looked forward each day to those 20 or 30 minutes when Mrs. Lesar would transport me to Middle Earth. The picture of her sitting on one or the tiny chairs designed for our eight- and nine-year-old bodies is as clear in my memory 33 ½ years later as ever. She had to turn her body at an angle so that she could use both hands to hold the book open, resting them upon her knees, affording us a glimpse at the vivid images of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantastical world as she read.
Bilbo’s journey from The Shire to Rivendell, through the Misty Mountains where he outsmarted the bizarre creature Gollum, to the epic battle at the Lonely Mountain … the story was etched in my memory.
And while Star Wars may have helped inspire a life-long fascination with film, I firmly believe that The Hobbit planted a love of literature in my eight-year-old brain. And Mrs. Lesar was the one who tilled the earth between my ears, making sure that the seed had a good place to grow.
Summer vacation came and I went back to playing with my Star Wars toys. I was lucky enough to have Mrs. Lesar as my fourth grade teacher at the new school we all were moved to in the fall of 1980.
But I never saw her again after that. She still lives in that mining community, which is a modest city now. Our paths have never crossed. But I know that when I first saw the trailers for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, I was instantly transported back to those warm days on the front lawn of a little schoolhouse, where a young teacher planted a seed in the mind of an ever-thankful student.