(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to 1980s Kansas City Royals shortstop U.L. Washington. The choice of a lawyer is an important one and should not be made based on advertising alone.)
The Bedford Central School District was filled with some really good teachers … and some really shitty ones. In that, I’m sure we weren’t much different than any other school district across this oh-so-great land of ours.
In thinking about the teachers who were most influential in my life, I realized that list has quite a few differences from the list I would make naming my favorite teachers.
Among those on the latter, I’d put:
- Second-grade teacher Mrs. Chambers, whose classroom was a menagerie of animals, from guinea pigs to hermit crabs to garter snakes.
- Fifth-grade teacher Mr. Krafic (sp?), who made history fun.
- High school English teacher Mr. Masters, with whom I shared many stories of basketball and life.
- High school economics teacher Mr. Poplardo, who went to bat for me in a First Amendment situation in his role as school newspaper advisor vs. the school administration.
None of those fine teachers would appear on my Most Influential list. That list would include the following:
- High school math teacher Mrs. Lambert, whom I loathed and who made my life miserable, not because of anything she did, but because I sucked at math involving letters. Still, when it came to teaching me perseverance, Mrs. Lambert encouraged me to keep trying no matter how many low C’s she handed back to me.
- Eighth-grade social studies teacher Mrs. Jakola, a small, cantankerous woman, yes, but one who upheld high standards and for whom, if you earned an A, you knew you’d actually done amazing work.
- And finally, the subject of this Living Eulogy, Libby Tulin.
It is not an exaggeration to say you (whoever you are) wouldn’t be reading this if not for Libby Tulin. That I have made a career with words (and other creative stuff in my career’s second half) is because, at a very key point in my life, Mrs. Tulin saw something in me and, rather than keeping it to herself, she encouraged me to use what she saw as my gift to make a difference.
Mrs. Tulin likely wouldn’t make many people’s Favorite Teacher list, which isn’t to suggest she wasn’t good at her job. Being a teacher shouldn’t be a popularity contest, and unlike some others with whom I crossed paths through the years, Mrs. Tulin understood that. She had a subject to teach — middle school English — and she taught it well. But she wasn’t flashy and she wasn’t all that chummy with those she taught.
As those who have read my other Living Eulogies so far can surmise, the middle school years weren’t exactly kind to me. Never one brimming with self-confidence, the situations I confronted through those years made me wildly insecure and devoid of any belief in myself.
The one thing I knew I could do well that I liked to do was play baseball. It’s a great game in that your results speak for themselves. If you’re a pitcher putting up zeros or a hitter routinely getting on base, you’re good. And I could do both.
The thing I liked to do that I had no clue if I did well was write. I started writing creatively shortly after learning to read. Writing became an outlet for the intense emotions I felt. It’s that way to this day.
But was I actually good at it?
Well, if you believed my parents when they read my short stories, sure I was. But they were hardly reliable witnesses. After all, it wasn’t all that long before I started to write that they cheered my mere ability to pee in the potty. Their bar wasn’t set all that high.
I don’t remember what I wrote that caught Mrs. Tulin’s attention, I think it might have been her “When We Were Young” unit. Whatever it was, one day she asked me to stay after class. For a kid like me, this was pure terror. I wasn’t a troublemaker of the highest order, but I certainly was not immune to causing problems in class. I had (have) a big mouth and didn’t (don’t) always know when to shut it. Note to teachers: If you’re asking a kid to stay after class and it’s for something good, let him or her know that in advance, please.
Anywho, the conversation was short and hardly a conversation. I was painfully awkward with teachers, and didn’t exactly take compliments gracefully. So it was more Mrs. Tulin talking and me turning red and repeatedly muttering “Thanks.” She said my writing was good and that there was this special program they were starting in which a small group of students could leave their English classes once a week and go to a special gathering of creative writers. There, we would work as a group to craft a story.
What I learned from that actual class wasn’t what turned me into a confident writer. No, no. The only thing I really learned from that class was that it sucks to try to group write anything creative and that I never wanted to do that again. Oh, and that Jamie Sellers was as creative as I thought she was cute. What ever happened to her, anyway? I digress.
Rather, what that class did for me … what Mrs. Tulin did for me … was show me my place in this world.
I have often and still often feel like an alien on this planet. But when Mrs. Tulin started finding me opportunities to be with other creative people, I had a home and a tribe. There actually were other weirdos out there who would rather put words in writing than speak them and who loved to create imaginary worlds out of combinations of these 26 letters we call an alphabet.
That class was just the start. Later that year, Mrs. Tulin found a writing workshop for me at a local college. It might have been Pace University, but I’m not sure. I was the only one from our school who was picked up on a bus and taken to this daylong seminar. Again, it wasn’t what I learned there that mattered. It was that there were hundreds of other kids there with whom I felt a sense of belonging. And when these people liked what I wrote, it meant something significant. That Mrs. Tulin thought enough of my writing to send me to this was powerful.
It would mean more later on, though. Because at the time, I had no intention of making a living with the written word, had no idea that the written word would mean so much to me. I was going to play baseball. Period. The end.
And then, in my junior year in high school, my elbow exploded. All of a sudden, I couldn’t pitch, I couldn’t throw without serious pain — even after all the rehab — and my career was done.
I was lost.
One day, my dad brought home The New York Times from his daily commute. He showed me an article about this kid in Pennsylvania who had started a baseball magazine and was interviewing Major Leaguers. Among his subscribers, he counted the commissioner of baseball, several current and former players, as well as broadcaster Bob Costas. My father encouraged me to write to the kid and offer my services as a sports journalist. If I couldn’t play baseball for a living, well, maybe I could write about it.
So I wrote to Tyler Kepner, who now, ironically, is a national baseball writer for the paper that featured a story about him all those years before. Tyler and I formed a great partnership for the remainder of my high school days. Through that, I was able to go to Yankee Stadium as a sports journalist and be in the dugout and locker room to interview players. I was able to interview Yankees legend Phil Rizzuto in my senior year. And I knew that I wanted to go to college to become a sports journalist.
Writing has became more than just what I do. It’s part of who I am. My career as a newspaper journalist wasn’t what I once hoped it would be. Thanks, internet. But still, I had fun and wrote stuff that mattered to people. Writing opened the doorway for me to reach others. Whether it was a story holding government officials accountable for how they spent taxpayer money, a courts story about a murder case of a tiny 8-year-old girl or a human interest story about a fish fry, I tried to bring to it the same passion and focus. All stories are about people, even the boring city council stories.
Writing allowed me to survive the death of my first child. In August 2020, we found out at the first ultrasound of our baby boy that there was a problem and he likely wouldn’t live much past birth. Jacob was born on Dec. 20, 2000, and died after about five hours of being with us. In the wake of that, I used writing as therapy.
I would be unable to sleep, trudge to the computer, type whatever chapters of what became “Jacob’s Story: A Journey of Faith” that apparently needed to be written, and then trudge back to bed. Ten years later, I was able to write a fictional follow-up focusing on everything I’d learned about life, loss and suffering since Jacob’s death. It’s called “The Envelope.” If you’d like a copy of either, you can go to this part of my website.
Sales pitch done (yuck), I can tell you I don’t know how I would have gotten through that situation without having writing as an outlet. And I wouldn’t have had writing as an outlet if it weren’t for Mrs. Tulin. To share the soul-deep wounds of my child’s death with the public was and is hard. But I know it’s what I was and am supposed to do. So I do it. In doing so, I know my words have helped others with their suffering. In some small way, that makes my own pain worth it. Sort of, anyway.
Never would I have had the belief in myself to do any of that if Mrs. Tulin hadn’t believed in me first — and stated her beliefs to me.
It’s not a surprise, then, that this whole Living Eulogies thing exists. I think it’s important for people to tell others the great things they think about them. It matters. It makes a difference.
I know it did for me.
So let’s raise a glass to a teacher who might not have been my favorite but who most definitely was the most influential. To Mrs. Tulin! Hear Hear!
UP NEXT: The most unlikely person I still talk with today.
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