From “Rags”…

It’s really hard to start this essay. Though I knew what I wanted to call it before I began writing it, putting a proper beginning on it has proven to be a bit challenging. This is at least the third attempt to compose something of meaning out of the death of James “Papa Rags” Ragland, taken from us by cancer on March 14, 2021. I don’t know if it’s the pain and suffering inflicted over the past 18 months, or the loss of such a titan in my life. Probably both, I suppose, as this blow would have shaken me even in the best of years; and while 2021 has been much better than 2020 was, one can’t ignore the gravity of the events in this country and the world since late January of last year, let alone the loss of people very close to us. The loss of Mr. Ragland, my sixth-grade teacher and a huge influence on my life since, has really rocked my world more than you can imagine. His guidance and support and advice will be missed, as will his smile and his laugh, and his rich and loving way of communicating. It’s kind of hard to remember a time when Mr. Ragland was not in my life.

Sixth-Grade

People write about hearing from other students about being assigned to Mr. Ragland’s class, about anticipating this sort of a wild man who did things in ways that other teachers didn’t, or couldn’t, telling stories and instilling laughter with the learning. While I knew I wanted him to be my teacher—my brother had been his student six years before and told me what a great teacher he was—I cannot honestly recall what exactly I thought of him. I only knew that I wanted him to be my teacher; that is all I can remember PR (pre-Ragland). Kenny Nicholl, whom I had officially met on the last day of fifth grade, would also be in Mr. Ragland’s class for the sixth grade. Kenny and I had become fast friends after just that one day. His fifth-grade teacher and mine had taken both classes to the Detroit Zoo as a last day of school field trip—remember when teachers did that? I only knew him from the times my little league team had played the team coached by his dad; they clobbered us. When we happened to fall in together that day at the zoo, however, it was like we had always been friends. I can still recall walking home together at the end of that day, being a little disappointed that school was over for the year; we promised to see each other a lot over the summer, memorizing each other’s phone numbers all the way home. Kenny kept reversing a couple of the numbers, but by the time we made it to Harding Street, the street on which his family lived, he had it down cold. We were both thrilled when we found out we would both be in Mr. Ragland’s class the next year.

It was better than we expected. Seriously, people were right about the story-telling and the reading of stories and the laughing, but they couldn’t do the guy justice. They didn’t tell us that he was in charge of the Safety Patrol. They didn’t share the fact that we went out for recess nearly every day, and we played football in the fall and winter, switching to softball for the spring. They failed to mention that he pitted the boys against the girls in these games and that he played for the girls; along with two or three hand-picked boys, he would quarterback or pitch them to victory, almost without fail. We almost never won. And we loved it! Those were some of the best days of my life. People told us he was a great teacher, but they didn’t tell us that he loved to talk about history, drawing parallels between those “ancient” days and our own, or that he was an exacting teacher who made learning fun. Much of my joy and delight in names is due to his example; I still remember the day he taught us about Xerxes, that long ago King of Persia. He was gracious to those who were less gifted, but always responded to someone who worked as hard as they could. He produced one of my earliest plays and taught me fractions, and he taught us about the joy of books and the Newberry Award list, of which I read more of the winners than anyone else in class; I was already a reader, but under his guidance I kicked in the turbo jets.

As I said above, he was the teacher in charge of the Safety Patrol, to which Kenny and I belonged, as did the third Musketeer, Mike Nader. Our job was to report to the crosswalks at lunchtime to make sure students were crossing safely. I don’t recall being as guilty of it as much or as often as Kenny and Mike, but Mr. Ragland told the story for years and years about us reporting people for walking outside the white lines of the crosswalk, as if going an inch or two outside of the line was going to make any of them less safe; we tended to go by the letter of the law, though, and reported them just the same. I’m sure guys like Jim Rippe and Brian Scott would have gone outside the lines on-purpose, just to cause trouble with the three little tattletales, but Mr. Ragland never seemed to tire of recounting the story. It was the best year I ever had in school, even with classes in high school and college; nothing could touch the way he talked to us, the way he made us think, the way he encouraged us at every point. The way he held us accountable, like the one and only time I ever heard him use a curse word.

We were at sixth-grade camp—remember when they still did that? Just a few days in community cabins, sleeping in the woods and playing games. We were supposed to be doing something around the campfire on the first or second night, a group sing or something, but a few of the guys started running through the woods towards the area where the girls had their cabins. (Why I was with them I will never know—these were not the guys I usually hung around with, so to this day I have no idea why I was running alongside them.) At any rate, as we got close to the cabin and bathrooms that the girls were using, one of the guys led us past the bathroom area. I think it was Jim Rippe, and all of a sudden he yelled out, “Barnhouse is on the can!” as we ran past. I couldn’t see anything and wasn’t really trying to anyway, but we all laughed and ran back to our own area. Mr. Ragland found out and I remember feeling so ashamed; we were sent to our cabin and were not allowed to take part in that evening’s activity around the fire. I was already heartbroken for having disappointed Mr. Ragland, and then he came to talk to us. All I can recall of that moment is that he told us, “You guys always have to be the damned hotshots!” I’ll never forget it. I made Mr. Ragland SWEAR. I was so upset.

The Years After

Apparently, there were no hard feelings, or at least he came to understand that I was guilty of a rare instance of misbehaving. He spoke highly of me for the rest of his life, and I still can’t understand why. He sang the praises of all three of us, and I guess I understand why he spoke so highly of Kenny and Mike; I truly have no idea why he made me feel like I was special. He did, though, every time I stopped in after school once in a while to see him. It was a bit of a hike in the opposite direction, but I occasionally went in after school to say hello and tell him what I was up to; he always seemed happy to see me. This would continue until I made it to high school, and went out for the football team, and Mr. Ragland became the assistant coach of the team. This was the greatest thing ever! I was already feeling a little out of place on the junior varsity football team, and that awkward stage of teenagerhood was hitting me hard. Trying to fit in, looking for what I thought was the right path, and he strolled right back into my life when I needed him.

We did not have a good team, but I was there with Kenny and a few other good guys, and I was doing the best I could. I did fine, but there was a reason I was on the JV team, after all. Kenny probably was better than that, but there wasn’t a lot of room on the varsity squad for sophomores. We only had one coach, and I couldn’t even tell you what his name was; he didn’t make much of an impression on me, I guess. After a few days, they brought Mr. Ragland on as a coach, and things instantly got a lot better. We still sucked, but it was a lot more fun. You knew what was expected of you, and I just wanted to please him; I worked as hard as I could and tried to play well when I was on the field. He didn’t provide anything in particular in the way of strategy or technique that I can recall, but he provided sort of an example of the kind of leadership the best teams seem to have on the football field. One of the things that he asked of us is that we not use bad language on the field, whether in practice or in a game. (I have to say in full disclosure that I cursed a lot; I still do. I don’t have the problem with swear words or foul language that many do, and I know they probably find that distasteful about me; I know a lot of words and I use them all, picking the word I want for the purpose I have. If it happens to be a swear word, so be it.) One day at practice, one of the guys was speaking, and he was swearing a lot; I spoke up and told him that Mr. Ragland didn’t want us using that kind of language. Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that I had made an effort to curb my language and thought he should, too, I don’t know; regardless, we said a few things back and forth, and I made my point. Somehow, Mr. Ragland found out about it, and he said many times—to me and to others he met—that Billy Robertson had spoken up at practice about bad language. I tried to tell him that I was as guilty of it as anyone else, but he said it didn’t matter. I spoke up in public, and that in itself was worthy of his respect.

When we graduated, each senior who had been in his class got a bunch of papers he’d saved since sixth-grade. Who does that? Mr. Ragland did. It was great looking back at who we’d been and comparing it to who we’d become, and I know that much of who I was had been called into being—or at least encouraged—under the patient tutelage of Mr. Ragland. Above and beyond the things I was taught at the chalk board, Mr. Ragland showed me that it was not only okay to be intelligent and sensitive and goofy, he helped to show me that that is exactly what people would like most about me. He’d had both of my sisters along the way as well, and became almost a second father to me, though it would embarrass him if I were to tell him that. He was as humble and gracious as any man I have ever known, and he often attended important family events, becoming more than a teacher. He was my friend. Even though I rarely was able to call him anything but “Mr. Ragland,” he often teased me, telling me it was all right to call him “Jim,” now that I was an adult. I would often call him or even write occasionally, and tell him what was going on. He was always encouraging, even when I was feeling like I couldn’t do anything right. When I became a teacher (the first time), he told me I was born to do it, that I was a natural. He called to say that he had written me a mental letter, and asked if I’d gotten it. I still laugh, thinking back on that day, the day of my first time teaching. I was a wreck.

If you’ve never taught before, that first day can be very trying, no matter how much preparation one has had. A former principal describes the first YEAR of teaching as “drinking from a firehose,” so the first day of that kind of year is a special kind of crazy. It was exhausting, and I felt like I’d gotten through everything I had planned after the first hour—there were still six or seven to go, and it was all me. I had wanted to be Mr. Ragland (or Mr. Keating), but I felt more like Mr. Magoo. He called me, knowing I would be home after that first day, and he listened to my worries and whining, and he gave me the best advice I could have; he gave me the best advice you could ever have for just about any situation, and advice that I have used time and time again in my life, any time that I was feeling like I was struggling or in trouble. When I told him about the hard day I had just been through, Mr. Ragland’s words were simple: “Tomorrow will be better.” And they were. Time and again, they were.

To Riches

James Ragland may have been wealthy. I don’t really know. His family spoke at his memorial the other day, and they mentioned several houses being filled with the various antiques and curios he and his wife had collected over the years. I know that the two of them owned and operated numerous nursery schools over the years; several of us from that sixth-grade class were invited out to help with a few manual labor type things on those properties, and then asked to sit down and have dinner with Mr. Ragland and his family. Did you get that? We were asked to have dinner with the Raglands! It didn’t matter what we had to do to get that invitation; we had dinner with the family of one of the greatest men ever! What a reward! I don’t even recall what it was that we had—spaghetti? Some kind of pasta. I know that Kenny and I were there, and Mike Nader, and Renee Lavesque, and I’m pretty sure Andrea Nizyborski was there as well—probably Tony Prusac, too. It was great.

We got to know the family of “Papa Rags,” if only through his stories about them all. (We even helped name at least one of his children! Seriously. Mr. Ragland loved to read to us, and his favorite book of all—which I confirmed with him the last time that I saw him—was “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H.,” which had characters named Nicodemus and Justin. We were pushing for Nicodemus, but he couldn’t sell that one to Bev, so his son became Brian Justin Ragland. We. Were. Thrilled.) He told us what they were doing and related funny stories of things they did at that house, that magnificent house that Ken and I called “Ardmore Manor.” It was hard to find at eight in the evening (BUT WE MADE IT, DAD), and it was very stately when the sun was up, though it was hard to imagine all six kids being comfortable in it. As we got older, Kenny and I would hang around with Stacy and Leslie a good bit, and I began to flirt briefly in my mind that I might still become a Ragland yet. That is, I wouldn’t be NAMED “Ragland,” but…well, you know what I’m trying to say. It never happened, of course, but the draw was irresistible. That family was wonderful…IS wonderful.

After a life of service as a teacher, and I want to tell you, it was a whole life, because he taught almost until the end, he retired from full-time teaching. He continued to coach and substitute teach until he was forced to stop; the pandemic made it too risky for him, especially with some of the health challenges he had dealt with over the years. There was no way he could do what he did via Zoom. He was too “hands-on” or needed the immediate connection one gets face to face. Really, he didn’t need to teach or work at all; he did it because he wanted to. I’ve heard the stories of the less than auspicious beginnings in the sixties, but after 60 years, he taught because he loved it. I don’t know how well off he was, financially, and I don’t care. He was the richest man I ever know, even if the wealth was not visible. The gifts of Mr. Ragland, both inside the classroom and out of it, enriched my own life, and the lives of everyone I know that ever met him. No one seemed to be immune to his charm and warmth and caring, even my dad.

Stacy Ragland found a letter my dad wrote to Jim. (It took me about 15 seconds to type that last word, even now—it just feels disrespectful to call him anything but “Mr. Ragland.”) It was a letter complimenting Mr. Ragland on his requirement of his students to work to write better. My dad had gone back to college to get his degree long after entering the work-force, and he had seen first-hand how important it was to learn how to write better, especially academically. Jim Ragland (it was easier that time) had saved that letter…since 1979. Whether he had gained monetary riches through the years is not known to me, but he had harvested the rich thanks and respect of thousands of students and their parents. He was the clearest thinker, the warmest and most respectful teacher, the greatest man I have ever known. Even though I feel his loss keenly, I have been given untold riches in having gotten the chance to have known and loved him.

His was a great life.