David Thaden

Found out today that David Thaden passed away last Friday. He tought me English in junior high, and I think he was the coach of the track team too, though if he was he didn't know a ton about it. I don't remember all that much from his classroom.

None of that matters. What matters is that I remember him as being a good guy and someone whose classroom I was happy to go to each day. That's a big deal.

It is interesting that the teachers I remember from middle school are all male: Dave Thaden, Jim Charles, Freddy Kiger, Tony Yount, Wayne Pollack. Not all of them were perfect human beings, though there's no reason to go into that now. I think it's most likely because my dad was even more imperfect, so the presence of relatively stable male role models was a big deal. Plus most of them were either into what they were doing or made a really good show of it.