The role of a teacher is very similar to that of a parent when you stop and think about it.
Your mom and dad raise you to be a good citizen with polite manners and respect for your elders, hopeful that those traits continue to stay with you in your later years. Then, by the time you've reached the age of four or five years old, you're introduced to this new thing called "school". This "school" concept is a building that isn't your house, filled with kids your age and older, and other adults who seem to be in charge of them.
Those people are called teachers, and they're your default parents from about 9:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon.
I think it's safe to say that everyone, when they think back to their school days, remembers their favorite teachers. Maybe they're the people who made the biggest impact on you from a future perspective, like they helped get you back on the straight and narrow. Maybe they're the people who your young developing mind didn't necessarily appreciate at the time, but looking back, you see that their methods and their attitudes helped shape you into an overall better person.
Maybe they're the people who put their students and faculty before themselves, helping to turn every negative into a positive and doing their best to produce smiles on the faces of young students every day.
Don Lockhart was very much one of those teachers.
Don, or 'Mr. L' as so many of us kids called him, was a dedicated teacher, principal, and basketball coach who was absolutely adored by generations of students. He taught at Outlook High School, but many of us Conquest kids will always remember him as the principal of our little school until the division decided that it was time to close up shop on both the Conquest and Macrorie schools in 1996.
Don passed away very recently, with his loving wife (and fellow teaching legend) Carol by his side. The last number of years of Don's life involved too much pain and too many health issues that seemingly caught up to him, and as I understand it, his passing would at least free him of all of it. It's certainly nothing I haven't heard of before. My own dad's passing was as a result of something similar - sometimes the human body is just plain out of gas and can't go anymore. It's a sad thing to look at death as being "the best possible outcome", but as we all come to learn, sometimes life just isn't fair and we have to deal with the cards that we're dealt.
Where do I begin with my memories of Mr. L? There are far, far too many to name, but I think that one that stands out the most was how he handled the Conquest School closure in 1996. Yes, everyone was sad, and when it came to our parents, many of them were also mad. But in the mind of Mr. L, it wasn't about wallowing in sadness or being afraid of perhaps an uncertain future, but it was about enjoying the 'right now' in front of us, together.
As a result, I will always look back on my last year at Conquest School - Grade 5 in the 1995-1996 calendar year - with such fondness. There were field trips seemingly once a month, games at recess to keep us all entertained, and annual staple events like the Christmas concert had a certain air to them, knowing this would be the last one. And all of it came to a head at the end of June when the entire school plus parent chaperones boarded a couple of buses and went down to Regina for two days.
We stayed at a Travelodge hotel, we dined on a never-ending supply of pizza, and we swam until our hands were good and pruney. We also toured the science centre and the RCMP museum, and I'm sure all the chaperones got plenty of exercise trying to make sure all of us Conquest kids didn't go missing, start any fires, or anger any busy employees. When the bus got back to Conquest that evening, everyone knew that not only did something very special and memorable come to an end, but we also had to say goodbye to our school.
In those hallways and classrooms, Mr. Lockhart never let anyone feel down and he always found a way to lift people's spirits. When you got something right in his class when you were called on, he'd enthusiastically call out, "Yes sir!" like as if you just solved the mystery of where Hoffa was buried. When you and your friends were tossing a football literally over the school roof at recess to kids on the other side, Mr. Lockhart could be swayed to try his hand at tossing it over. Except on this occasion, he'd lobby up and actually kick that sucker long and high with a resounding POOM!
Don was also a celebrated coach on the basketball court, and I had an absolute blast being on the team at Conquest. He made practices fun, and he made you feel like an absolute superstar when you made a shot. He did this because he knew you could do it, and it was just a matter of getting YOU to believe that you could.
He was a source of positivity for kids who needed it. He was a shoulder to cry on if you were feeling down. He was an understanding adult when we all felt like so many of them just didn't listen to us or take us seriously.
When I think of Don Lockhart, I smile, and I know that I always will.
My thoughts, positivity and all my best wishes go out to Don's family and friends right now. I'm fortunate enough to say that I've had a good handful of great teachers in my life, but Mr. Lockhart stood out on his own in so many memorable ways.
I'll miss him, and I'll always remember him.
For this week, that's been the Ruttle Report.
