Steve Mecham has been known to sword-fight principals.
If the story he's telling calls for it, he flops on the floor to pretend he's snoring. He sports pirate costumes. He tells jokes. He imitates voices. And he strums guitar and sings upbeat tunes - often ones he wrote - to squealing elementary schoolchildren.Mecham is a storyteller, hooked on kids. And he makes certain all 27 elementary schools in Weber School District regularly witness storybook productions, stressing basic values and reading, a la Mecham.
Make that Superintendent Mecham.
Or "SuperNintendo" Mecham, if you're a student.
"I always felt that if you're blessed with talents, you need to exercise them and use them to lift others," said Mecham, who spends time chatting with schoolchildren any chance he gets. "I never stop celebrating life."
But this summer, Mecham's celebrations will come outside the Weber district he has led for five years. At 60, Mecham is retiring, closing a professional chapter in education spanning 35 years.
"It's not health-related, it's not church-related. It's just time to move on," he said. "I will always be working with people, with children. It's integrated in my life. . . . I'll just continue to tell stories and sing songs."
Mecham began his career in 1962, teaching hearing-impaired children at the Utah School for the Deaf. Called "Little Tex" as a toddler because he rolled his R's in song, Mecham was determined to instill the joy of music in his deaf students learning to lip-read and speak.
Music wasn't just sound. To him, it was sensation.
"A hearing-impaired child is a child first," Mecham said. "The only handicap we have is our attitude."
The students' faces would light up - just as hearing children do - whenever Mecham strummed, bounced and sang. They felt drum vibrations Mecham pounded for them. Soon, everyone sang along in their own pitch and learned to dance and play piano and guitar.
Mecham, whose father, Milton, was Weber State College's head football coach, also knew a school wasn't a school without a football team. Soon, his players took to the gridiron with opponents from Wasatch and Weber counties and Idaho.
"We had the best football team - (opponents) didn't know when we were going to snap the ball," Mecham said, chuckling.
Mecham took his innovations to Canada, where he served as principal of the Montreal Oral School for the Deaf. Later, he was Connecticut's director of education for the hearing-impaired and director of guidance for the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York.
He also taught post secondary education at Columbia and McGill universities and was chairman of the education department at the University of the Americas. In the early 1970s, Mecham and his family spent five years in Mexico City, developing a school for the hearing-impaired.
Mecham returned to the Beehive State in 1977 as coordinator of special education for Weber School District, where he went on to become principal of Roosevelt and MarLon Hills elementary schools and associate superintendent.
"(Mecham) is a professional from the word go. He just exemplifies the ideal that the child is important," said Maloy Hales, principal of MarLon Hills in Ogden. "He's an incredible leader."
Between meetings, Mecham can be spotted sitting with children in reading circles. He has gone to MarLon Hills in 16th Century dress to roll out Shakespearean verse, and in recent weeks tossed third-graders gold candy-coins from a treasure chest as part of his "Edward and the Pirates" production.
In the 1980s, Mecham invited then-Gov. Scott Matheson to hear students sing the state song, "Utah, We Love Thee." The applauding governor suggested Mecham compose a Utah ditty.
A few nights later, Mecham suddenly awoke, dashed to the piano and wrote the song, "O Utah's My Home," start to finish. After singing it to Matheson, Mecham's ditty appeared in legislation to replace the state song.
"I was absolutely shocked," Mecham said. "My only interest was to encourage more people to get involved in writing more beautiful music for children and citizens of Utah."
The measure failed in the Utah House by one vote.
Mecham's zest for education led him to a position as associate superintendent at the State Office of Education. There, he served alongside associate superintendent Scott Bean, now the state superintendent of public instruction.
"I just hate to see him go," Bean said. "He's just an energetic, fun person to be around. But besides being a nice person . . . he's an extremely competent superintendent," improving academic achievement and incorporating music, art and drama into the curriculum, he said.
Mecham vows to keep in contact with children, perhaps through educational consulting in his retirement. He already has some prospects in California.
Judie Hancock, president of the Weber Board of Education, suspects he'll pop into Utah classrooms from time to time.
"He's just got this in his blood. He loves those kids," Hancock said. "Have you ever met someone who just makes everyone better whenever they're around? He's that kind of person."
Mecham will cherish the memories he's collected through education, like when a junior high student approached him singing the "Unicorn Song" Mecham sang five years previously.
Or the elementary student who gave him a card and hug in recent months. The child had drawn a school, a girl, a heart and a book.
"She wrote, `I love school, and I love books, and I love you,' " Mecham said. "I said, `That's three of the best things you could ever say to me.' "
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
"O' Utah's My Home"
I'll always remember wherever I roam
Great mountains and valleys and the desert I've known
Painted skies in the sunset uplifting to see
White wings of a seagull, in Utah I'm free.
I'll always remember the Utah I've known
Her beauty will live on, O' Utah's my home!
And the wind in the valley will whisper a while
To the snow-covered mountains where skiers all smile
And the white sego lily where cool streamlets flow
See the fish keep on jumpin' and the fishermen glow.
With all of her seasons inviting for all
Come hunters and golfers through winter and fall
And motors are humming on lakes or on trails
With beautiful shorelines and colorful sails.
Where children are smiling in schools everywhere
And teachers are happy to show that they care
And people are friendly with families who share
A spirit of love here is filling the air.
Come climb up a mountain and see all the rest
How pioneers prospered by coming out West.
But a power much higher has led us to know
By faith we were guided to help Utah grow.
In Utah we welcome your faith and your race
To people all over, now this is the place.
So join hands together, tho' different we be
The future now rests with our States unity.
Weber Superintendent Steve Mecham's "O Utah's My Home" was included in legislation to replace the state song, "Utah We Love Thee," a decade ago. The bill narrowly failed.