Roy

As most readers know, writing and speaking is not my first career. Actually, it is my third, law being the second, and teaching being the first.

In my last two years of teaching I was privileged to work for a wonderful leader and mentor, Roy Thomas. I didn’t take all of his advice, but that’s for another Briefing. What I did learn from his example was great leadership.

Roy was a smallish man, rather ordinary looking, quiet, and somewhat quirky. This month of the year, for instance, was “Ape-rile”, pronounced consistently as if everyone else said it that way, too. He was somewhat persnickety about organization and personal tidiness, and at first you might take him as a bit uptight. But if you did, you were making a mistake.

Because Roy lived for everyone else. Each kid in his school was a sacred charge, to be formed and fitted to be their best. The quiet kids in the corner shadows were not overlooked, the achievers were celebrated but reminded of the obligations which come with giftedness.

I remember Roy mostly for his mentorship. By that point in my career I had found my stride as a classroom teacher, and in fact hosted a steady stream of student-teachers from the local teachers’ college. Roy’s dream for me, and several of my colleagues, was that I would follow him into the ranks of leadership. Roy understood that the most important role of a leader is to produce the next generation of leadership.

By example, by opportunity, by introduction, by encouragement, we were encouraged into another world, the world of leadership. Given opportunities to take responsibility and take charge, to succeed with praise or fail with a safety net, we began to learn something of his life and his role in the scheme of things.

A few of my colleagues followed through, a few chose other options in teaching, and I brilliantly cashed in my savings and my pension plan and my gold-plated medical plan to struggle through law school and start again from ground zero. But that, too, is another story.

Roy perhaps did not turn us all into educational leaders, but Roy made each of us better humans, more careful thinkers, more appreciative of those who lead, maybe even a little wiser.

And every Ape-rile I think of Roy.