I Don't Want to Thank the Academy

The odds are that I’m never going to stand on the Oscar stage and give an acceptance speech, so I thought I would go ahead and give one today.

I want to thank all of those people who worked on the project with me.  But I’m not going to name you now because I’ve already thanked each and every one of you in person.

I want to thank my wonderful wife.  I want to thank all my friends and family, and there are too many to name now, but they know how much they mean to me.

No, tonight I have others to thank.  Tonight I especially want to thank the unsung heroes of my life.  No, not Drew Brees or Roberto Clemente.  Tonight I want to thank my teachers and coaches, who influenced me so much as I was trying to gather together my particular toolbox to go out and repair the world.  I’m thinking of one in particular.  His name was Royce Ladner and he taught Senior English and Literature at Long Beach High School in Long Beach, Mississippi. 

What a fun year that Senior Year was.  I remember that first discussion test which shocked us, in that only 4 of us passed.  Some of my classmates had never failed a test before and I remember their dismay, but it was like a college level exam, and we were instantly better prepared for college. 

I remember that we broke up into groups of four to reenact a Shakespearean play.  Steve Woodfield, Jerry McCullough, Jeff Jenkins and I did Hamlet, and we were great, if I do say so.  We decided to have a little fun, and we got the class to vote for some awards.  We had a ceremony and gave out our awards for acting.  We called them "the Roycie’s."  We crafted the awards out of a block of wood, and put a red pen on it, because Mr. Ladner was deadly with a red pen as we had already found out on that test and many others.  I’m pretty sure Jeff got best actor in the class, Hamlet got best play, and we gave Mr. Ladner a special merit award for his reading of Beowulf, which was a thing of grossness unlike anything we had ever heard before.  But once you heard him read it, you never forgot it.  Can’t even tell you how many correct Jeopardy answers I’ve gotten from it.

He made us memorize a sonnet, and I can still remember most of it.  I can’t find my keys half the time, I can’t remember who won last year’s World Series, but I can still compare thee to a summer’s day.

Royce Ladner died Tuesday. 

I’m not sure I ever even saw him after I graduated, so this is an inadequate thank you.  I know little about him except that he was a great teacher.  I certainly never forgot his class, nor its impact on me.  Teachers and coaches are underappreciated in our society, but we all know that.  They bring varying degrees of passion and dedication, and on every payday they are reminded that we undervalue them.  But they all make a difference, some big and some small. They can’t all be as effective and memorable as Mr. Ladner was at English and Literature during the 1970-71 school year, but that’s perfectly fine.  The fact that they choose a life of teaching is pretty amazing.

I’m not good at clichés so I’m not going to say “Rest in Peace Mr. Ladner” because I’m not sure what that means, and I’m not going to say “You will be missed” because I think that’s a given.  So here’s the thing I most want to say to Mr. Ladner.  “You made a difference.”  Your life meant something, you impacted a lot of people, many never forgot you, and I know I think of your standards often - mostly when I see what passes for grammar on the internet.  

It would turn you into Beowulf. 

Goodbye and Thanks.