Faculty Feature: Science teacher

Tracy heads for the hills

After beginning his working years under sea level in a Navy submarine, a 27-year member of our Lakeside Lutheran science faculty, Mr. Damon Tracy, is retiring from ministry to start something new somewhere in the North Carolina hills.

Retirement announced fall 2022

Last October, Mr. Damon Tracy (‘83) shared a letter with his Lakeside family: Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

After much consideration, I am announcing my retirement from the teaching ministry. Lakeside, with its fantastic faculty, staff, students, parents, supporters, friends and uncountable blessings, will be greatly missed. We are and will be very much in God’s hands, and I cannot imagine a better place to be.

Very Respectfully, Damon S. Tracy

13 years after graduation, he returned for 27 years of teaching

According to Damon himself, guiding future graduates of Lakeside Lutheran helped him appreciate his own past—including his time on a Navy submarine—and the Christian education that helped lead him through his own life choices. He taught in our science department—especially Chemistry and Physics, but others as well, including Freshman General Science, Environmental and Earth Sciences, even Health. He also led audio/visual efforts for the campus, supervised a student A/V group that helps with recording, and—well before 2019 but intensely since—livestreaming concerts, sports and theatre performances. (Follow LL events on livestream.com/llhslive)

Reflecting, he shared, “I am always amazed at how much the Lord blesses the students’ efforts—from the beginning of the year when the students in Chemistry are figuring out how to use math in a science context, all the way through to the final exam where I see them answering questions that they never would have understood at the beginning.

“Students who might never have raised a hand in class spoke on subjects they had heard about but were never formally taught: black holes, space travel, relativity, dinosaurs, blowing stuff up (very frequently asked), life on a submarine, how things work, politics and more. It’s a testament to how important it is to keep students at this age surrounded by a Christ-centered, reliable environment where parents can feel confident in how these topics will be addressed.”

Mr. Tracy escaped campus before he could be pinned down for many future plans, but a 2017 interview—one that asked what his “favorite things to do on a Saturday” were—holds strong probability for similar answers when asked what he might do now that he’s retired: be “a storm chaser, an astronaut, or a benevolent dictator of a small country (none of which I have actually done ... yet).”

Lakeside will miss you, Dictator Director Tracy. God bless your travels, your southern living, your family and whatever might get you to show up at a future homecoming. We promise to find someone else to record the game!

At top: Physics students (2013 in this pic) always appreciated the hands-on learning that was the flagship of Tracy instructional style. Middle/bottom: Damon was always notoriously camera shy, but 27 years is a long time, especially when he so often agreed to help with young elementary students on campus for field trips. In 2019, 2nd graders learned whether Cheetos made good rocket fuel and what engineering made for the tallest Lego tower.