My best friend and I exchanged amused glances back in 1963, as we settled into our desks on the second day of sophomore English class. She raised her brows; I rolled my eyes.
The teacher, robust with flashing black eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses, had greeted us with enthusiasm at the door. Now as he turned his back to write on the blackboard, a dusty gray footprint was clearly visible on the shoulders of his tan jacket."Does this mean Mr. Rogers is a teacher we can walk all over?" I giggled.
It was a question I only asked once. Ed Rogers commanded respect and attention from the moment you met him.
Here was a man with astonishing credentials. He had served his country during the Korean War, taught school in Samoa and put in time as an actor, radio announcer, photographer and news writer.
But he didn't stand there and tell you all these things. You just sort of found them out. He demonstrated his expertise as the need arose and then worked hard to help others gain expertise, too.
The thing about "Mr. R" was that he really believed in people.
With a deep melodic voice, he routinely announced sporting events, sang in choirs and made literature come alive for his students. But more important, he used those rolling tones to encourage the kids he taught.
"You can do it," he'd say. "And you can do it well."
And because he said it, we believed. Kids in his journalism classes at Clearfield High School produced award-winning newspapers. Yearbook students he advised at Dixie College turned out volume after volume of meticulously compiled memoirs.
Even adults in the community-school programs he directed benefited from his belief that each human being was born to succeed.
Inspired by the example he set and his faith in me, I, too, became an English teacher. Later taking time off to raise my children, I used the skills I'd learned in Rogers' journalism classes to do newspaper correspondence. Then I began to write newspaper columns.
"You can do it," I'd remember him saying when my efforts to write seemed confounded by a houseful of squealing children jamming the keys of my typewriter and pulling on my shirt.
"You can do it." I'd almost hear his words of encouragement when my own words seemed inadequate.
That wonderful voice is still now. Edwin Franklin Rogers died of congestive heart failure on Nov. 25, after a four-year battle with cancer.
Seeing his body laid to rest across the street from his beloved Dixie Rebels, I wanted to tell the world how special he had been. The man with the footprint on his coat had left a wonderful impression on my life.