A one of a kind teacher
“I've learned
that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how you made them feel.” That Maya Angelou quote came to mind today as
I thought about a favorite teacher who passed away last week. Mr. O. William (Bill) Hanner, aged 73, passed
away in Pilot Mountain on September 5.
He was the quintessential teacher, coach, and friend.
At my high school, people often made snide remarks about subjects
the coaches taught (like coaching was their only passion, and teaching a little
aside they had to perform in order to coach), but Mr. Hanner had a rare
combination of passion for teaching and learning as well as athletics. He appeared to love both equally.
I have a two-inch square picture of him taken from an old
photo album from high school days. In it
he’s seated at his classroom desk, a row of history books held up by brick
bookends in front of him and a history poster on the board behind. It reads “World Communism Today” and has the
Soviet Union colored in red. I wish I
had sent him a card when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and figured out a way to
get him a chunk of it. I know he
celebrated.
I study this small picture. He is wearing a shirt and striped tie, his
everyday attire. His sideburns are low
as he always wore them, his black eyeglasses giving him the scholarly look of
an academic. In the heat of making a
point about some turning point in history, he would take his pointer finger and
push the bridge of those glasses frame higher on his nose. Often, he held his finger there with eyed
squinted to hold a dramatic moment.
Because Mr. Hanner was a gifted storyteller he made
history classes engrossing epic narratives.
I remember going home and asking Mama and Daddy if they knew about the
Zimmerman Note that Germany attempted to send to Mexico before the United
States entered World War I. I was
indignant that Germany had tried to turn our neighbors to the south against
us. That a high school student would go
home and discuss history with her parents verifies Mr. Hanner’s talent.
My college World Civilization class was actually easy
after having Mr. Hanner’s high school version of the same class. By today’s standards I’m sure we received an
accelerated world history. We had college-level
supplementary books (Voices of the Past: ancient and medieval-early modern
times) that gave us the actual words of the people alive during different
periods of history. And, of course, Mr.
Hanner made those voices live.
For all the accolades I could give for Mr. Hanner’s
teaching, his real asset was being a genuine, caring human being. Someone mentioned in an online post that Mr.
Hanner cared about each person individually.
That is true. I remember the way
he talked to Hal and Jimmy and Jane and Wally, all of us, as if we were the
best, the reason he came to work each morning.
I believe we were.
Mr. Hanner, the bachelor, married our beloved Rebecca
Haley, the art teacher. It was a match
made out in the middle of the nowhere, a high school built “down in the hollow”
as Mama always said, and a match made in heaven, given the love and loyalty
that couple gave each other. When she
passed away prematurely, Mr. Hanner lost a part of himself.
I know there are times his voice is in my head as I
answer a student’s question about some piece of information from history. Sometimes if the moment is right, I tell a
story out of history to preface the reading of an article, and the room will
become still, the students listening as if wanting to hear. I know that a master storyteller told me
stories like that a long time ago, and I hope that in these past decades my
students have passed it forward.
I do remember things Mr. Hanner said, some things he did,
but more than anything I remember the way he made me feel: important to him. I’m thankful for his place in history. We are all the better for his having been
here.
Arlene Neal
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