A Quest for My Fifth Grade Teacher

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My quests are widely varied. Some of my more fulfilling ones have to do with books. Being who I am and considering my background, that should be no surprise to those who know me. I love books. All books. Just being around them makes me very happy. I love the smell. I love looking at the fonts and layouts and covers and blurbs and, well, everything! One amazing quest occurred during the early days of the extreme anemia associated w/the uterine cancer I had. In the winter of 2001, shortly after Miss M got her pacemaker, I began thinking about a book my fifth grade teacher had read aloud to my class. I remembered it had to do with the Brontës and toy soldiers but I had no idea of the author, title, anything that could help. So I used the research skills I began honing at Vance-Granville Community College in Henderson, North Carolina back in the early '80s while taking the required Library Services course and began poking around the internet looking for anything to do with the Brontës. I told myself that if I looked long enough, I'd find the name of the book that had to do with their toy soldiers. And? I did it! I found out the title of the book was, in the USA, The Return of the Twelves and the author was Pauline Clarke. (The UK title is The Twelve and the Genii.) That was half the battle. Then I had to acquire a copy. Our local libraries did not have it. So then I began looking online. I couldn't afford to buy it new, so after searching auction sites and so on, I finally ran across a group of homeschooler parents who exchange books for their kids to read. For the cost of shipping and $1, I was finally the owner of a used paperback copy of this book I so loved having read to me when I was ten. I got the book in midsummer of 2001. I was elated. I was joyous. And I felt Mrs. Sechriest with me much of the time. Then, that August, something compelled me to read the obituary section of the online version of the Durham Herald-Sun. Up to that point, I'd only read obituaries on microfilm while doing research for school. That day, however, I did it online for the first time. There she was. Carolyn Sechriest. She died on August 6, 2001 from cancer. I found that obituary within a day of her passing. I loved that woman. She's the best teacher I had in elementary school. Her funny haircut, her sparkling eyes when she was being wicked and loving it, her calm, her wonderful inflections while reading to us about the toy soldiers or Mrs. Pigglewiggle and more. This woman introduced me to Van Gogh and DaVinci and Gilbert and Sullivan and Gandhi and anthropology and Ethics and so much more. I still LOVE Mrs. Sechriest. After Miss M, she's the best teacher I ever had. I'm tearing up from it now as I type. So when I found she died, I went on another quest to find her family because I really wanted to be able to tell them what I'd never told her. And, children, I succeeded. I found one of her daughters and an email address and I wrote a letter full of love and regret and gratitude. I had a gorgeous response too, full of all the grace and kindness one might expect from a child of Mrs. Sechriest.