Mrs Gay McCalister 1974
“Gay McAlister 92 of Wellington passed away peacefully at home Friday, February 17, 2023.”
A picture in an old high school yearbook. Words of loss on a page.
No picture, no words (certainly not mine) could do you justice.
In 1974, unknown to me, I really didn’t have much of a future. Directionless, ignorant of just how ignorant I was, looking ahead to nothing more than the gray, meaningless uncertainty of an empty life.
And that’s being generous to this clueless young man. It’s very depressing and frightening to think what might have become of this young jerk if one special teacher hadn’t changed my life with one simple gesture; she cast me in the Junior class play “The Beverly Hillbillies”.
Mrs Mac taught Spanish I, II and Speech I, II. I had taken Spanish because everyone took Spanish. I took Speech I because everyone took Speech I.
The culmination of Speech I was the production of a play. There were no auditions, Mrs Mac cast the play as she liked from the students in Speech I.
I was lucky enough not to get the lead. My role was Milburn Drysdale, the stuffy banker. It was a character role and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. We rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and performed the play once.
One and done, but that hardly expresses what this show meant to me then and would mean to me for the rest of my life.
I loved every aspect of rehearsal and performance. When I stepped on that stage to perform, to make my feeble attempt at acting, it awakened something within me, some unknown sleeping magic, that has never left my life.
And I received the single greatest compliment ever in my life from an upperclassmen. She didn’t relate it directly to me, she said it to someone but it found it’s way back to me.
“I didn’t know Conner Dain could act.” (not my real name)
How could she, I didn’t know it either.
Up to that time I was another jerk guy from a poor family. Completely unremarkable in every conceivable way. All the cool kids (and everyone else) ignored me.
Until we did that show.
After that show, people treated me differently. The cool kids, who had ignored me before, didn’t ignore me quite as much. One huge bully of a guy, who had pushed me around since fifth grade, suddenly was, if not my friend, someone who liked hanging around me. He even took up for me once when some other bully tried to push me around.
Lynn A., If you’re out there buddy, know that I still think of you very fondly, and treasure the memory of us hanging out outside the gym.
She saw something in me, something no one else could see, something I couldn’t see. In the one simple act of casting me in a silly and completely forgettable play, she conveyed something to me, something I hadn’t known or understood before, and to everyone else:I was actually good at something besides being a selfish, sarcastic, and self indulgent jerk.
And as Robert Frost said “And that has made all the difference.”
After she retired from teaching she continued to make a difference in peoples lives, in her own passionate and selfless manner.
The Ritz theater was one of her great passions and great victories. My little town just wasn’t big enough to support a movie theater, especially when first run movie rentals climbed into the stratosphere. It had been closed and was in great disrepair.
Until Mrs. Mac decided to stepped in, and with the help of other people she brought it back to it’s former glory and so much more.
The difference she made in life simply can’t be understated. She saved me, and so many others. Lots of other directionless kids owe their futures and their very lives to this wonder, passionate, and caring person who enriched our lives with love, for her, for our town, for our fellow people, and for ourselves.
Thank you Mrs. Mac, for my life, for the things I love, for the things about which I’m passionate. Please add my voice to the hundreds, perhaps thousands who see you as their gateway out of the darkness, the gray emptiness of an uncertain future.
Thank you Mrs. Mac for my life.
