Mr. Gerald Hutchins taught eighth grade history at the same middle school for thirty-one years. He drove the same 1998 Buick for twenty of those years because, as he put it, the car still worked and there were better things to spend money on.
Nobody fully understood what he meant by that until he retired.
His retirement party was held in the school gymnasium on a Friday afternoon in June. The principal gave a speech. Former students sent cards and letters. A few of the parents who remembered him from years past stopped in to shake his hand. Mr. Hutchins sat at the head table in his good blazer and accepted the attention with the mild discomfort of a man who had never once sought it.
Afterward, when most people had gone, a young woman nobody recognized walked through the gymnasium doors. She was maybe twenty-six years old, wearing scrubs under her jacket, and she had driven four hours to be there. She had a letter in her hand and she asked the principal if she could say something before Mr. Hutchins left.
The principal said yes. The handful of people still cleaning up stopped what they were doing.
The young woman’s name was Destiny. She had been a student in Mr. Hutchins’ class fourteen years earlier. She had been what teachers quietly called a difficult situation – an unstable home, inconsistent attendance, the kind of child who falls through cracks because the cracks are too numerous and too wide.
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