One of the great honors of my life was to teach beside an amazing woman that taught school for over 50 years. Her name was Marie Acre and when I was ready to give up, she told me how to keep going. I knew I could follow her footsteps, because she was my husband’s high school English teacher and if she could survive him and his friends, she had earned her bragging rights and could be trusted to lead. Her first advice to me was, “If you don’t have a vision for your students, then you’ll never get them anywhere.”
In the fall after my mother-in-law passed away, my husband came into the school cafeteria and sat down across the table. He had tears in his eyes and confessed he had run home to have lunch with his mom, as he had done countless times before. In early autumn she would keep a pot of greens and cornbread warming on the stove. This crisp cool day mom wasn’t there. The empty silence when he called her name brought reality and soul wrenching grief. I cried too and ran to Mrs. Acres’ library. I explained my husband’s sorrow and my inability to cook as his mother had. Mrs. Acre took my distress as her mission. She called her sisters, opened her freezer and pantry and by 3:00 o’clock, she had recipes and specific directions for a Rooney feast to fill our stomachs and heal our broken hearts.
Years later Mrs. Acre’s age began to show, but she was indispensable to our school and its children. She moved from classroom to library. Well past the age when most retire, she blazed a trail, becoming proficient with the new technologies landing on educator’s desks. She was instrumental in leading our younger generation of teachers into the new world of personal computers.
There came a time when our beloved friend and mentor began to slow down. As she arrived on campus each day, in her late husband’s old Ford truck, she needed assistance getting settled in her world of books and knowledge. My husband or our superintendent, Mr. D. Rowlett would meet her with a lending hand. One morning her parking space remained empty and a phone call to her cell went unanswered. Without hesitation, Keith and Mr. Rowlett headed to her home.
Breaking and entering wasn’t easy for two law abiding men, but they managed and found the incomparable Mrs. Marie on the floor between her bed and the wall. She said she had fallen in the night, but was content and resting because she knew, when morning came, someone would come checking on her.
ALS took the life of one of the most inspiring women I’ve ever known, but her legacy is marked by the warmth she gave to those who experienced her love for people and knowledge. She also left the greatest lesson she could have ever taught, “The night doesn’t seem so frightening when the hope of morning is only a few short hours away.”
Sing praises to the LORD, O you His saints, and give thanks to His Holy Name, For His anger is but for a moment, and His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
Psalm 30:4-5
Blessings,
Gretchen
This is inspiring and heart warming. It is because it validates the hope that there are people out there living for what is good. There are people out there serving something larger than themselves. And it validates the idea that when people do that it really does change the world.