They came from all over the country just to see one man for a few hours. Doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, millionaires, CEOs, entrepreneurs, financial planners, professors and teachers gathered on a recent evening to pay tribute to Mr. Ward, their old high school teacher and mentor.
A woman in Boise who, through miscommunication, didn't hear about the event until the morning of the tribute, dumped her kids in her husband's lap and drove from Boise.
Another former student drove from South Dakota.
Others flew or drove from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, California, Washington, Oregon and Nevada.
Don Ward — one of the best bargains the state education system ever had — was being honored on the occasion of his retirement after 30 years of teaching. Fortunately for future students at Alta High School, he will return this fall in a part-time role, teaching his advanced placement history classes and advising student body officers.
"I just couldn't go cold turkey," he explained.
A 30-year habit of long days and nights is difficult to break. He's now teaching the children of former students.
For 5 and 1/2 hours, former and current students waited in line to congratulate and visit Mr. Ward.
"There was my father and there was him," said Bindie Roberts (Class of '82).
"Mr. Ward just spends so much time with kids," said Brock Hansen, last year's student body president who organized and hosted the reception on the front lawn of his Draper home last weekend. "Everyone loves him."
"Mr. Ward is the constant," said Todd Handley (Class of '83). "He was all about the kids. He has impacted thousands. There's this connection between people who have been in his class."
Perhaps no one summed up Ward's impact better than the former student who noted, "Everyone here tonight thinks he was his favorite."
Substance over style
All this fuss over a soft-spoken, slouched, graying man of 60 years who looks like the original unmade bed — chalk dust on his pants, food and ink stains on his shirt, unkempt hair, clothes disheveled. He's about as hip as a pair of penny loafers.
"He was a total mess," said Roberts. "We were trying to decide what looks different about him tonight. It's his clothes. They're clean."
"The first time I saw him I thought, how did this guy make it as a teacher," said Hal Halladay (Class of '81). "This is the most combed I've seen his hair . . . He doesn't look a day older than he did when I was there, and he looked like he had been teaching 30 years then."
"I had heard a lot about Don before I came to Alta," said Alta principal Mont Widerberg. "I looked at his appearance and thought, 'This can't be Don Ward.' But he doesn't worry about those things. He worries about his students. There's nothing false about him."
Mr. Ward isn't flashy or especially funny — Mr. Kotter, he's not — but put him in front of a classroom or give him a student to work with and something happens. He is substance over style.
"The kids absolutely love him," said Morgan Brown, an Alta teacher. "They're crazy about him."
Ask him why students revere and respect him, Mr. Ward pauses so long to consider an answer that you wonder if he heard you. "I love the students," he says at last. "And I do know my subject. I think we have a responsibility to know our subject."
You can't fake either one. Mr. Ward attends one or two conferences every summer to learn more about history. He was one of 25 teachers (among 1,300 applicants) to be accepted into a monthlong study course at Cornell University last summer. He has attended conferences in Vermont, Colorado, California, Washington and Texas, learning from experts on subjects such as Jacksonian democracy, the Federalist era, the Civil War, causes of the Revolution, the Cold War, Lewis and Clark.
"You ought to hear him speak," said Georgie Taylor, the mother of two former Ward students. "He commands an audience. He holds you spellbound."
Life's lessons
But much of his hold on students comes from his work outside the classroom. He spends long hours in the school and in the homes of student body officers, planning events and teaching life lessons often well past midnight.
"He'd talk to our son for hours," said Joanne Pendleton, whose son Daniel (now on a church mission) is a former student body president. "He'd teach him about important things in life. It was a lot of one on one. He's blessed our family."
"He'd stay 'til 2 in the morning sometimes," Hansen said. "He would stress honesty, integrity and treating everyone the same, no matter what their social status. Then we'd stay up late playing pool. He's a kid at heart."
This is to say nothing of the thousands of hours Mr. Ward has spent watching ball games, dance recitals, debate tournaments and concerts. If one of his students is involved in an event, he's almost always there. He has attended about 900 LDS mission farewells and spoken at 150 of them.
"He was at every function," said Chuck Cutler (Class of '82). "Not just at school functions, but everything. After basketball games we'd go to Godfather's Pizza and there he was. He was just one of the guys."
Halladay recalled seeing Mr. Ward late one night after a school dance. "He was vacuuming the floor — and he was lying down while he did it. He was so tired."
Why spend so much time with kids?
"So they see that I care," he says. "You can't be just a teacher in class. When I was hired 30 years ago, a man named Dick Gourley (a district administrator) told me, 'Don't ever forget that you teach students, not a subject.' "
What's important
Mr. Ward didn't just learn the students' names; he learned the names of parents and siblings and the interests and events of their lives.
"I saw him for the first time in 15 years and he knew the names of everyone in my family and asked about each of them," said Steve Taylor (Class of '80). "He just genuinely cares about his kids."
"He knew every one of my kids by name tonight," said Gordie Campbell (Class of '80). "He knows more about my family than I do."
It helps that Mr. Ward has a world-class memory. As a longtime "ticket taker" at school athletic events, Ward visits with students and parents as they pass through the gate, inquiring by name about family members and the specifics of their lives.
During the reception, students presented Mr. Ward with a large framed plaque that listed, among other things, the student body officers he had advised each year for three decades. As a test, they asked him to name the officers from 1986, '81 and '79. He passed the test.
When Hansen was trying to contact former students to invite them to the reception, some from as far back as the late '70s, his best resource was Mr. Ward. "He knew their maiden names and married names — and he knew their parents' phone numbers, by memory."
"You remember what's important to you," says Mr. Ward, "and those things are important to me."
Students tend to remember Mr. Ward long after they leave high school. He is constantly invited to weddings and farewells and college graduations. He continues to stay in touch with many of his former students, and they continue to seek his advice over the years. He devoted a whole day recently to a former student who needed help.
"I've been fortunate to have a very understanding wife, the best wife on earth," says Mr. Ward, the father of two children. Because her husband spends so much time away, Sharon Ward often comes to help him sell tickets at high school games "so we can visit," he says.
The morning after the reception, Mr. Ward slipped out of his own church meeting to drive a half-hour north to attend an LDS priesthood ordination of one of his students. A local church leader introduced him to a Sunday class by saying, "When I think of all that's right with public education, I think of Mr. Ward."
As for Mr. Ward, he was still letting the previous night's events settle on him. "It's humbling to see that people I care about so deeply care so much about me," he said. "I'd like to say it was a big payday, but being with these kids the last 30 years was the payday. I feel like I'm the luckiest teacher on earth."
E-MAIL: drob@desnews.com