Daily Archives: 19 March 11

I just found out a couple of days ago that my seventh grade math and science teacher, Mrs. Price, died of ovarian cancer earlier this month.  She was only 50.  Though she was diagnosed, apparently, back in 2009, I didn’t even know that she had been ill, and  I probably hadn’t seen her since sometime in the spring of 2005, shortly before I moved out here.

A little bit old-school in her methods (at least when I knew her), Mrs. Price wasn’t always one of the “fun” teachers, though she did have a sense of humor, which she used sparingly and to good effect. She was an educator of genuine integrity: patient, concerned, and compassionate.  I didn’t have an easy time in middle school; I was ceaselessly bullied, and by the time I was in seventh grade I had begun to pay very little attention to my schoolwork and was falling behind.  Of all my teachers, Mrs. Price was the one who expressed genuine concern and who tried to work with me at a time when I was experiencing, for the first time in my life, what I would later know as true depression. It seems to me that Mrs. Price was also my eighth grade homeroom teacher, but my memories of the two or three months of eighth grade that I spent in public school are blurred almost beyond recognition at this point, so I may be wrong.

I did see her on occasion in later years, and she never failed to stop for a quick chat if we happened to run into each other. From what little I’ve been able to learn of her final illness, it appears that she was able to attend her son’s wedding only two days before she died: a beautifully tragic end to a life that was far too short.