I read the news today, oh boy, America is once again fighting its scripted wars. Our social media streams, for several years now, are filled with false narratives and cries of the coming dooms day. The journalists of this country will find it hard to be trusted ever again. In today’s America it is completely up to the individual to filter their way through the lies that have been dished upon us. The only time I look in the local rags are for the obituaries, or the police beat, to see how many old running mates continue to buck authority. The names of those who have passed are our only touch with reality in an era when mass media in America is simply the voice of a huge expansive government that is doing everything in its power to leave the American dream in the dust. As I check the obits daily, I check first to make sure myself, or any relatives names appear, and then scan for friends of my parents, or mentors from my past. When I do recognize a name that has a deep-rooted connection, I take a long pause before taking myself back to a time when my world was filled with innocence . To a place where my neighbors, teachers, the community I lived at was a special protective bubble. Glancing through the bereavement section last week I saw the name of my seventh-grade math teacher at New Paltz Middle School: (Janis Vankleek Witz 1940-2024. Ms. VanKleeck was a dedicated teacher, lived directly across from the school, had two lovely daughters, a son, later a stepson and grandchildren. Janis’s maiden name was Shand, and she had graduated from the same school district she ended up spending her teaching career in. It was exactly 52 years ago that she was 32 and I was a 12-year-old, who teachers like Ms. Vankleek made me feel like I was part of a safe and loving family as I strode proudly down the halls of my Middle School.
In those days life came at me like a blue October day with the leaves at their peak. Math was by far my brightest subject. No matter the class, if you were trying to find me, you had to look deep into the row of chairs to catch a glimpse of me sinking low. The adage that “the best students are in the front” was accurate at New Paltz Middle School. The resistive scholar in me was doing everything in his power to separate from the “machine” which is our public-school system. Second row from the back was the best place for note passing and flirting with who ever was placed near to me on the seating chart. “And if I can’t find my way back home, it just wouldn’t be fair, cause precious and few are the moments we two can share,” myself and Christine Yeaple were discussing how much we loved the new top 40 hit as Ms. VanKleeck faithfully droned on about carrying numbers. “Being with you is a feeling I just can’t compare”. At the ripe old age of 12, only a year away from turning into an angry young man, I was holding on to the glorious world of youth and innocence inside the bubble of a stable village. It was a time I trusted my teachers and the community itself to have all our interests as the number one priority. In Ms. Vankleek’s math class I remember my mind being primarily on Christine. “Richard could you please stop distracting everyone around you.” The back of the room was where I could conduct all personal business and garner the best positioning to attract the attention of at least one victim.
The year was 1972, I was a young boy on the edge of puberty, and all the quirkiness that goes with it. It was the beginning of the real life that was ahead and unknowingly the end of my freedom from guilt. Growing up in a small hamlet the teachers in the public schools became the models you built your own foundation upon. Each teacher seemed larger than life. They weren’t people with their own lives, they were there to do the urgent task of preparing the next generations. Not until I became a teacher myself, did appreciate that our teachers were normal humans, with all the pandemonium and craziness in their lives as anybody else. In the seventh grade I had a team of teachers that have now since passed. Al Beard, a great English teacher who should have been a college professor. Bob Feldt my history teacher who was a wonderfully principled man. Denise Huede and Eileen Falkner, two French teachers who were both quintessential educators. Mrs. Martin was the “old school” science teacher. Jon Wirth my football and basketball coach, a conflicted man who seemed to be on a collision course for an early death. When I read the news of Ms. Vankleek passing it evoked all the sweet emotions and dreams of my magical youth in the bosom of a community that I trusted. The amazing mentors of the past who literally shaped and influenced thousands of kids who passed through the halls of New Paltz Middle School. Back in 1972 teachers stood at the doorway as students entered. Everyday eye contact and a comment, or two, built bonds that would last throughout the years. It felt like students and their teachers were in it together. There was little talk of politics. It was all about learning the subject that was being taught. It was the time of our lives when we were all only beginning to discover the things that made life worth living.
The connections we make with the mentors of our youth are life altering. Sitting in Ms. Vankleek’s class in seventh grade math I was at the pinnacle of guiltlessness priming for the fall back to reality. All things were within the realm of possibilities, and I could not yet forecast any of the obstacles that would shortly be in my way. Our teacher’s made it comforting to dream our dreams in our small hamlet in the safety of solid mentors, as we came of age. The small box contained everything in the entire world, there wasn’t much of an outside existence apart from, maybe, Kingston or Wallkill. At the age of 12 I had three priorities: fitting in, the record of my current team at the time, and the songs on the radio. It was a shivering February day back in 1972 that I was reminded I was just one kid in the back of a filled classroom. I was seated in my usual spot for eighth period with Ms. Vankleek. I remember in her class having an aura of confidence in myself that would be lost in my teen years. Myself, and my backcourt mate, Eric Ackerly, would sit and wait for our teacher to turn her back to the class and then started passing secret documents back and forth, along with a faint whisper: ‘Ack, did you see the new girl, I hear she’s the daughter of a preacher man,’ I announced having just seen her heading towards Mr. Hochreiter’s room. “Yes, I did” he said far too loud. “We got no shot, she’s already hanging with the upperclassmen,” Ms. Vankleek was doing new Math on the board when she abruptly turned about face. “That’s it, you two in the back, out, head on down to Mr. Barberio’s office.” We looked at each other with a slight smirk and headed for the door.
Ms. Vankleek was the kind of teacher that you trusted. She could be an understanding listener and a firm enough task master. Like most teachers in my youth their interest in me went beyond long division or pronunciation. “Good game yesterday, said the my dynamic math teacher, who was not one of the teachers who enjoyed snuggling up to the “jocks”. ‘Thanks,’ said the guy who loved the attention until he got some. I was a very little guy in a very little town, but I was smack in the middle of what I thought was the biggest arena in the world. Inside my fiefdom I was the master of the universe. In reflective moments I can finally make some sense of the past. I understand my teachers were the compass that I followed through the forest of adolescence. Teachers like Janis Vankleek made the playing field level, we all felt free to run with open fields ahead of us. For myself that first year as a seventh grader at New Paltz Middle school was as exhilarating as any time in my life. Puberty had not arrived and the emotional pain of being a teenager was still on the backburner. Everybody knew my name, I felt accepted, I had close teammates and close friends. I got invited to the cool parties of the hottest cliques. It always seemed like we were protected in our
beliefs and our personalities. Looking back, it was the end of a great shamelessness that would completely leave me by the time I was a ninth grader.
In the end we hit the teenage years and spinning a bottle gets so much more complicated. We can remember, we can appreciate, but we never can go back to those precious and few moments we experienced in a tight home-grown community. “And if I can’t find way back home it just wouldn’t be fair.” Yes, youth is lost on the young, but as we get older, we come to understand this is a necessity. Those glorious days of youth are the opportunity to build solid foundations that will become our rock throughout life. Sometimes the echoes of the music, of the friends, and of my childhood mentors stay with me like the baby blanket I hung on to through college. Well into my sixties now, I am awed at how vivid my memories are of a time in my life when my reality had everything to do with the events of my day and nothing else. For approximately the last decade, I routinely check the obits knowing that the inevitable discovery of the names that made a difference will hit your soul. On each occasion the news is painful to digest, and in most cases, it triggers a flow of sweet memories. I hadn’t thought of my Seventh-grade math teacher in 50 years. Janis Vankleek taught for 30 years in the same public school she attended. She raised her family in the same hamlet, went to the same churches, shopped in the same stores, and every day she stood at her classroom doorway making sure all of her students were recognized with dignity. Without being cognizant our teachers become a part of us. Rest in peace Ms. VanKleek.
