Relative Something

We are at the lake this morning, Labor Day Monday, and our daughter, Elysa, is at home to take care of our animals. It rained and rained here last night. I shudder to think about how much water washed through our paddocks at home. This is an abbreviated visit for me. Cyndie had come up on Saturday night to spend more time with her family. I hitched a ride up yesterday in time to attend an afternoon memorial service for Steve Schultz, a man who taught both Cyndie and me at Eden Prairie schools, and then later became a precious colleague of Cyndie’s when she took the job of principal at EP’s high school.

He had moved up to the Hayward area after retirement and became a volunteer at the regional theater and concert venue, the Park Theater, and that is where the celebration of his life was hosted. This being an out-of-town location for most folks, it was interesting to hear so many stories from the local people who only knew him in the later years of his life. In turn, they expressed how revealing it was to learn about the man’s earlier years.

In Hayward, he was coordinating singers and songwriters in performances at the theater, and no one there realized he had his own history of playing guitar, singing, and writing songs. More than one person said that if they had known, they would have gotten him up on that stage. Mr. Schultz was my teacher for an English elective, Poetry and Song, one year. It was a perfect match for both of us.

One aspect of the man that I appreciated learning about yesterday was his role with all his siblings. When I was an adolescent, looking at him strictly as being a school teacher of mine, I never thought about him in terms of having his own brothers and sisters. It really filled out my perspective of him as a whole person.

He was a special guy that I feel very lucky to have learned from and to have known.

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