Lasting Legacies
by Debbie Holman
No one in my family had ever gone to college. My parents, M.C. and Lucille Holman, expected that from me, but it was also my Boerne ISD teachers who encouraged, taught and modeled effective teaching methods and stategies for being successful in life-both positively and negatively.
From Mrs. Mary Voges' first grade classroom in 1969 where Tip ran from Dick and Jane to Mrs. Billie Hoffman's middle school classroom where she read to us each day to Mrs. Temple Turner's (Frau Turner's) German IV class my senior year when Lesley Hutton and I made a schwatz welder kirsche torte, I learned from them all.
One of my biggest influences, and the reason I wanted to be a teacher, was Mrs. Polly Schuetz, my fourth grade teacher. Several of my friends and I would wait on the fenced-in asphalt area (now the parking lot west of the Boerne ISD Administration Office). We each wanted to be the first to say "Good Morning" to our loving, almost grandmotherly, teacher who drove in from Kendalia each day. Her hair was already mostly grayed at that point, and she wore dresses ("always with pocket" she would say) on her more rounded features. Perhaps because she was that shape, about the same size as my Grandma, I could relate to her in my own homemade dresses because Sears did not have many "chubby" sizes back then.
She instilled in me a deeper love of books and writing, though I didn't realize it at the time. We wrote letters back and forth after I got out of fourth grade. I will always remember a postcard she sent me from one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's houses in Missouri which showcased Pa's fiddle. You may know this as the basis for the TV series "Little House on the Prairie" series. Her postcard simply said something like, "One day when you visit here, write a postcard to someone else and inspire them to come here as well." My Mom and I visited the house and museum in 1990. Based on Mrs. Schuetz's advice, I sent a postcard to a young friend with the same message on it. When Mom and I returned from Missouri, I wrote Mrs. Schuetz a letter, sharing the experience with her and letting her know what an influence she had been in my life. She responded with a letter recalling specific details about my year in her class, and she enclosed several hand-crocheted white Christmas ornaments.
When I first began working at Fabra Elementary, I was surprised to find out that Don Piper, the music teacher, was Mrs. Schuetz' grandson. We both had heard stories about each other from the woman we loved over the years, but we had never met until we worked on the same campus.
In 1999, I was honored to be Fabra's Teacher of the Year. Four days before I found out, Mrs. Schuetz passed away. She was never one to bring attention to herself, but was so proud of each of her former students. I know heaven was having a party that day!
I think of Mrs. Schuetz and all the other teachers who positively impacted my life. I only hope to reflect the joy of learning to my own students like I had so that our influence may go on long beyond our years on Earth.
