San Francisco teacher turning 100 is celebrated by students she inspired over the decades
OAKLAND -- On Sunday afternoon in Oakland, a 100th birthday celebration for a retired teacher became a heartfelt class reunion. Students from nearly four decades showed up to honor their beloved mentor, known simply as Flossie.
As she wheeled herself down the hallway to her own birthday party, Florence Lewis was thinking about the students who were on their way to see her.
"They're coming when they're 70 years old because they remember that something I said made such a difference in their lives," she said. "And those memories have carried them back here. It's not that I expect it. I could never dream of it."
About 40 former students filled the courtyard at Piedmont Gardens in Oakland to help their former instructor celebrate her 100th birthday. Flossie, as her students knew her, taught English literature at Lowell High School in San Francisco for 20 years and for 18 years at Lincoln High School before that.
She said she first had to learn what it took to be a good teacher.
"Because the kids were smarter than I was and I had to outwit them and the only way I could do it was by being a performer. And I performed," she said.
Her classes were fun but challenging and Flossie had a knack for bringing the plays of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw to life. Brad Friedman, class of '73, was so inspired by Flossie's class that he became a teacher himself, teaching high school drama for more than 30 years.
"Teachers teach and students listen -- or don't," he said. "You're not some know-it-all who's just throwing stuff down at them. You're someone who is getting in the weeds with them and figuring things out together. With Flossie, it was an experience. I just always felt that we were all engaged in some process together that was very exciting and a lot of fun."
Another former student, Susan Simpson, became a lifelong friend and helped organize the reunion. She lives with a condition called "primary lateral sclerosis," an illness related to ALS which has taken her voice but, speaking through an audio text reader, Susan said it was Flossie who helped bring her out of her shell in high school.
"I was in Flossie's home room three years," Simpson said. "Every morning she greeted me in several English classes. She taught me how to write. She helped me believe in myself and to have fun."
Apparently, Flossie had that effect on a lot of people. Daniel Handler used to hang out in her classroom after hours and was later inspired to begin writing children's literature using his now-familiar pen name, "Lemony Snicket."
"I thought, 'Sure, it would be fun to be a writer.' But she was someone who ... she just didn't let you coast on some airy dream or some half-assed thought. She made you pay close attention and do careful work," Handler said.
Flossie said she first decided to pursue teaching in the late 1940s because it was a job that women could do back then. She said she thought she could command the attention of a class because she had the kind of personality that did not seem "teacherly."
Above all, Flossie taught the need to engage fully -- both in writing and in life. It was a lesson her former students took with them on their journeys and it is the reason they were eager to return.
"Because if they're smart and they need you and you are there for them they never forget," she said.
Doctors, lawyers, architects -- many of them already retired -- in Flossie's presence on Sunday they all became high school students again. Because once a teacher, always a teacher.