March 11, 2012

Toquerville is a fantastic place. I am sitting in my home office looking out at great mesas and other evidences of eons past. I can imagine struggles and hardships, friendships and families as they journeyed through this land, tens, hundreds, and thousands of years past. In most spiritual communities there are knotholes through which we can peek in at the past.  We can also look at what will come during the days before the millennial reign of our Savior on earth. History provides us with evidences of what to do to avoid destruction, disappointments, derailing. Peeks into the future via Isaiah, John the Beloved in Revelations, Lehi in the Book of Mormon, and others provide us with fortification against going off the rail and following the Lemmings off the cliff of pride and worldliness.

When I was in the prime of my teaching career, I kept looking for perfection in the academic system. I brought my family to Holbrook, Arizona to teach at Holbrook High School. I was certain that the small-town invironment, with an excellent mix of ethnicities, cultures, and spiritual communities would be a great place to raise my family and find professional satisfaction. We built a home as a family – brick by brick, served and grew spiritually through worship and activities in our LDS Ward, and generally had a sterling opportunity to make Holbrook our permanent home. About February of our second year, 1979, a great cloud fell over us. We were told by the Superintendent of Holbrook School district that funds were low and teachers without tenure would not be given contracts. How could they do this to me and my family? I made a commitment and they had broken trust.

Here comes history. The past tells us that if we work with people, play nice, and avoid nasty duels, we will come out on top. I went to a school board meeting to express my disappointment and completely wiped out my cause. They ended up cutting selected positions including mine as a business teacher. Here comes the need to be able to understand the future. Because I was “riffed” I asked for and received a contract to teach in the resource program. I found the program to be non-existent. The program consisted of a closet/classroom, working with wonderful students who had trouble learning. Had I looked to the future, I would have seen two things. First, working with students who “learn” differently from the norm, is truly my passion, and second time heals most circumstances and within two years, my position miraculously reappeared and they hired the lady-in-waiting out of the business office who had been working toward her teaching degree.

All worked well for us. We moved to Orem, Utah where I completed my teaching career and a thirty year Utah State retirement package. Would it have been better for us if we stayed in Holbrook? We will never know. What we do know is that the things we do in life; the things we say; the bridges we burn in our zeal to get it right are what we take with us. History has taught me that people, when pushed into a corner (especially if it impacts their family) will fight for their very lives. The future has taught me that restraint, calm, prayer, (hearing the answers to prayer), planning, and clear thinking can keep us out of all kinds of trouble and grief.

God bless each as you work to attain eternal life with your families.