Mr. Fowler in 1982. Photo / Supplied
Greg Bruce visits his favourite primary school teacher - but finds his memories are not shared
It was 1985. Richard Hadlee took career-best figures of 9 for 52 at the Gabba, David Lange told the Yanks to stick their nukes up their asses at the Oxford Union, and Back to the Future came to the Monterey in Howick.
I was 8, the same age my eldest daughter is now. Mr Fowler was 41, four years younger than I am now. I remember him in shorts, long socks and a sweater vest, through which the outline of a pack of Pall Malls could always be seen. In the years since, he is the teacher I have thought about most. Second is not even close.
He retired from teaching 15 years ago but it wasn't hard to track him down. I called the Pakuranga Heights Primary School office and said I wanted to write about a former teacher. The office person said, "Which former teacher?" I said "Mr Fowler." She laughed and said, "Ah, Mr Fowler! I remember him well!" I wasn't surprised.
Later that day I answered a call from an unknown number and a voice I didn't recognise said, "Hello, this is Dennis Fowler." I tried to fit it to the man that had been so important to me in 1985, but was unable. He didn't sound anything like I remembered. I briefly wondered if my phone number had been passed on to the wrong person. I told him what an important figure he'd been in my life and said I would like to write about him in the newspaper. He said he wasn't interested in talking himself up in the newspaper. I told him he wouldn't have to.
I drove to his house on a fiercely hot day in early January. When he later told me he'd lived there for more than 40 years, it struck me that I had never considered, age 8, that he might have had a house, that he might have left school each day and driven to a building in which he lived with the wife and children I had also never considered him having. When I left his classroom at the end of each day, my understanding was that he disappeared, to be reconstituted for my benefit the next morning.
When he appeared at his front door, I recognised him immediately. His hair was greyer than it had been in 1985, and he walked with a crutch because he was waiting for a knee operation, but otherwise he was exactly as I remembered. I had planned to address him as Mr Fowler but, when I tried to say it, it wouldn't come out. It felt false, like it was trying too hard, so I called him Dennis, although that didn't feel right either.
I had thought about visiting him many times over many years, but as I walked in his door that day, I began to feel like it was a mistake - like I should have left my memories of him in a sepia-tinged 1985. I knew that whatever was about to happen would forever affect the way I would remember him, and probably also myself - and not necessarily for the better.
Primary school was a great time for me. I was good at sport and in the classroom, and my bad hair had not yet proved socially ruinous. When we played Smurfs I was Papa Smurf and when we played Star Wars, I was Luke Skywalker. I was great at spelling, a house leader and invented the game Machine Gun Horrors, which, for a while, was played by many of the boys in my class at lunchtime. Given all this, I assumed he would remember me, but he didn't. He remembered my old next-door neighbour and the kid in my class who'd had a stutter and numerous other kids from that and other periods, but he had no idea who I was. He'd looked through old class photos, but said he didn't have one from my year.
I told him I'd had flaming red hair, thinking that might help. "Ah, a ginga," he said. "I never liked the gingas." Although his face never changed, I'm pretty sure he was joking, because he was a famous jokester. I reminded him about the time I'd brought an absence note from my dad, which began, "Dear Chookhouse" and ended, "Yours sincerely, Goosie." This had been a big deal at the time, at least to me, because his laughter at my dad's jokes made me feel proud, and he asked me in front of the class if my dad was bigger or smaller than him, and made a mock threat to fight him. When I reminded him of this incident, he said it rang a bell, but he didn't say any more about it.
He would have the class play a word game called Ghost every Tuesday morning and a number game called Buzz every Thursday morning. He would give the winner a piece of cardboard on which he would write the name of the game in colourful letters, then add some stickers. I won Ghost 11 times that year, more than anyone else, and I also won the end-of-year champion of champions title, which he told me at the time was well-deserved. When I reminded him of this, he didn't remember it.
I tried recalling other moments that might prompt his memory, but nothing worked. I'd like to think it was just too long ago for him to remember.
I guess I'd assumed we would reminisce about our shared experiences, but he'd taught for more than 20 years before I'd been in his class and he'd taught for another 20 years after. His teaching career had comprised a whole life, of which I had been barely a speck, and his most interesting experiences had nothing to do with me. It's embarrassingly obvious once it's written down but it's hard to reminisce with someone who doesn't remember you.
We didn't connect in the way I'd hoped we might, in the way I remember us doing when I was 8. I suspect some of his views on the world differed from my own, and it struck me that I'd never before considered views on the world to be things he might have. They altered the way I saw him, although I tried not to let them. Obviously, a kid doesn't see a teacher the way an adult does. The kid is less judgmental. In at least this way, the kid is better.
I asked him if he'd always wanted to be a teacher. "No, not really," he said. "In my sixth form year [at Auckland Grammar], somebody came along from teachers' college. That was in 61. The fact of being in a single-sex school, you were quite intrigued by people of the feminine persuasion. So we were invited down - all those in the sixth form who were considering teaching - we were bussed down to teacher's college and followed one of those classes around. I couldn't believe the women. Miniskirts were just coming in at that time … The girls and that there, that was enough for me."
When I asked him what he was proudest of, he said he had taught for 47 years and had only taken 27 sick days. Because this wasn't the answer I'd hoped for, I asked if there was anything specifically to do with teaching, or the kids he'd taught. He said: "It's hard to put a finger on it. I enjoyed their company and I hope they enjoyed my company and I hope they remember me fondly and perhaps - perhaps - they just learned something."
He said he'd had certain things he'd always tried to get across - basic facts, ball skills, a love of reading, but the big thing for him was always enjoyment. "Because if I enjoyed it, the children would enjoy it."
He said: "I was proudest of teaching the child. I didn't teach the subject, I taught the child."
He never sought promotion, never wanted to get into a higher paying job, to become a principal, work for a consultancy or anything like that. He only ever wanted to be in the classroom, and that was where he stayed, until the day he retired. "It was my happy place," he said.
It's hard to say what a good teacher is, but you know one when you see one. I liked him from the beginning, liked being in his class, found it endlessly interesting and exciting. He was big and loud and funny. He had funny names for some of the kids in the class - or at least I found them funny - and his classes were always fun. One day he replaced all lessons with a day of riding bikes around the field.
He read to us a lot, and he read a lot himself. I wouldn't be a writer if Mr Fowler hadn't been my teacher, or at least that's the story I tell myself. Once a month, he would make a trip to the school library service building in central Auckland, collect enough books for every kid in the class, and he would sit us down on the mat and give us a sales pitch for each. I had never been so fascinated by books as I was by those books. This was the year I read my first chapter book, The BFG, by Roald Dahl, which triggered my love of books. At least, that's the story I tell myself.
In 1985, after a game of water polo in the school pool, I'd asked him privately who was player of the day.
"Who was goalkeeper at this end?" he said, pointing to the end at which I'd been goalkeeper.
This is the moment I have thought about most when I have thought about Mr Fowler.
During the two or so hours I spent at his house, I didn't say much. I didn't even ask many questions. I had hoped we would laugh about my dad's hilarious absence note, that he would reflect on my year-long dominance of Ghost, that we would talk about my childhood strengths and - to a much lesser extent - weaknesses. In short, I had hoped he would recognise me and was disappointed when he didn't. It was only later that I thought about how selfish that was, given that he'd once spent a whole year doing exactly that.
Whether or not he changed my life and the lives of a large number of others, and I would argue that he did, he made school a place to which I and many others wanted to come, and he was recognised inadequately for that, as teachers always have been. Good teachers make us feel like we matter. They see us. The least we can do is see them back.
Unbound Vol 1 weaves together pictures and interviews with NZ surfers.