Rest In Peace, Mr. Shields

If you have been around me for any length of time, hearing the many stories I am prone to tell, one the recurring characters in some of those stories was one of my high school teachers, a man named Mr. Shields. He is one of the two or three favorites of the educators I had, one from whom I learned concepts and ideas I still possess, cherish, and use; as well as a friend for several years beyond high school, which for me was a graduation cerermony in June, 1978.

Gayle Shields taught, among other things, Earth Science from his classroom on the northside of the third floor at Durrett High School. If memory serves me his class was Room 307. I had him for classes in three of my four years of high school. Earth Science is a far-scoping discipline and Mr. Shields taught it to the extreme, at least the extreme available in the late 1970s. It encompasses physics, geology, geography, meteorology, mathematics, chemistry, and some biology. He taught small parts of each area. My love for weather, maps, and geography found a nurturing home in Mr. Shields' classes. It is a love which can be found while wandering through the previous 227 posts on this blog. He introduced me (and others) to United States Geological Survey maps, how to use them, and why they were and are important. At the time, USGS maps were available to the public through the USGS office in Louisville which was at one time located in the J. Stoddard Johnston School, a building which has mentioned here along the Left Bank of the Ohio River near Milepost 606 more than once.

I remember an occassion where we ventured out upon the roof of my Alma Mater to make some calculations as to the distance of various highly visible objects based on the math formulas he had taught us. We looked at the steam tower of the old James Russell Lowell School to the west, the old Preston Street Road Water Tower on South Park Hill to the south, what is now Kaden Tower to the east, and the 800 Building to the north. From those calculations, we were asked to draw maps showing their relative locations to Durrett. I had been and remain an amateur map-drawer since before I was enrolled in kindergarten, and from his teaching using these techniques, my awe of maps, distances, and the high points and low valleys of the area around my home and school was enhanced by great degrees. I had no direct connection to Lowell School, a school which had served the old Highland Park neighborhood which, like the neighborhood, is no longer there. But the other points that day were places fully familiar. My grandfather had been a carpenter working on both the 800 and the Kaden Tower. And South Park Hill remains the highest point in Jefferson County, at the eastern base of which my grandfather had built his new home in the 1950s, the home in which I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s. The water tower itself was removed when the Preston Street Road Water Company was absorbed into the Louisville Water Company. I can only imagine how Mr. Shields would have responded to the latter-day invention of GPS systems, now all the rage. As it was, for those who listened and learned in his classes on mapmaking, GPS technology is simply an afterthought, much like computers are for slide rules. I learned to do it the old fashioned way using compass points and triangulation, a skill Mr. Shields claimed to have learned while serving his country in World War Two.

Mr. Shields also told stories - every day it seemed. Some people ridiculed him for this while others revelled in the rekindling of his tales from his war days in World War Two and Korea. I was a reveller. He talked about General Patton as if he had been a personal aide to the war hero, something he claimed from time to time, and for all I know he may have been. He had an antagonistic but polite passion when it came to politicians, whether Democratic or Republican. He was the first person I knew who was a registered Independent. We discussed that now and then, because then as now, politics was a passion of mine. Each day, on the far right hand side of the blackboard (something schools no longer have, I'm told), he would write a few witty words of wisdom. Some were dead-on serious, while most offered a tongue-in-cheek assessment of the roles each of us played here on Earth. I wish I could remember them. The one I do remember went as follows, satirizing a bit our small place in the cosmos, vis-a-vis the rest of the universe.

Do not worry if your job is small
And your rewards are few.
Just remember that the mighty oak
Was once a nut, like you.

Mr. Shields became a family friend, having chaperoned one of the several bonfire parties my brother and I had as teenagers where he arrived on a motorcycle and took up residence with my maternal grandfather, Dan Hockensmith, on a downed log in the back yard, where the two of them threw down more than a few sasparillas reliving their shared experiences from WW2, the Big One. Mr. Shields was an Army man, my grandfather a Seabee in the Navy. He was four years younger than my grandfather.

There are many people who urge us all the time to thank our teachers for making us the people we come to be. I did that with my friendship which remained once the classroom hours were completed. Although I haven't seen Mr. Shields in many years, he has remained one of my favorite people and he has influenced my life in many ways, ways which continue to this day.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Shields.

His obituary from today's Courier-Journal is reprinted below.

*****

SHIELDS, GAYLE, 90, of Louisville, passed away August 18, 2007. He was born in Henry County in Clements Bottom, near Lockport, KY. Gayle was a career Army officer. He served in World War II and Korea, serving in the American, Pacific and European Theaters. He was also a retired teacher for Jefferson Co. Public Schools (Durrett High School), an author and community volunteer. He was a graduate of duPont Manual High School and Western Kentucky University. He was preceded in death by his loving wife, Mary Kathryn Voll Shields. He is survived by his five children; 11 grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; one great-great-grandchild; a sister; a brother; two sisters-in-law; one brother-in-law; and many nieces and nephews. Funeral Mass: 10 a.m. Friday at St. Athanasius Church, 5915 Outer Loop. A celebration visitation will be held in the church cafeteria from 11:15 a.m. -2 p.m. Friday, where friends and family are invited to share in the celebration of Gayle's Shields life.

Published in The Courier-Journal from 11/18/2007 - 11/22/2007.