Robert Rosenthal ’80 Remembers

I met Grace on the first day of the Eights. Before the day had even begun, I broke a wooden shuttle from a weaver’s loom in her classroom. Grace took me directly to the woodshop and told Leo that all of my playground periods and free time would be spent there until I’d made a new shuttle. As she left me, in her best affectless and chilling tone, Grace said: “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you. So far, I’m not impressed.” In the many years since, I liked to call her attention to our meeting. “What kind of thing is that to say to an 8-year-old?” I would ask. “Well,” she would answer, “Look at how nicely things worked out.”

Grace was our teacher when we were eight. That was more than a half-century ago for my classmates and me — about a quarter of the way through the generations of Eights who had the good fortune to share their third grade with her. Her classroom was a universe, with a map painted on the floor and a solar system suspended from the ceiling. There were spinning wheels, looms, animals in cages, plants, hot plates cooking, science experiments, musical instruments, mobiles, globes, abacuses, model wigwams, art supplies, and boxes filled with parts from long-forgotten displays, games, and toys. At the center of that universe was Grace, who encouraged us to broaden our perspectives and to put our imaginations into action. With a voice rarely raised, and an eyebrow that often was, Grace made us work. She inspired us to ask questions and to find answers, to stand up for ourselves and to support each other; to “speed the slow, remind the eager; help the weak and guide the strong,” she quoted.

Grace was excited by all that we would discover for the first time — each of us, every year, for decades. I visited her fairly often over the years and was struck by how she could be as excited about her students in the year she retired as I remembered her being when I was in her class. And they were as engaged then, as we were so long before. Whatever she was doing for all those years, it didn’t get old. And neither did she. When she retired from Little Red, Grace went off to teach in China for a year, reporting on her life there by email (overcoming her initial resistance to that form of communication). The accounts of her life away were engaging, informative, and funny. And today, half a world away, there is surely a group of young adults who would share every sentiment expressed here. Grace’s universe was expansive.

Grace was a teacher, a colleague, a mentor, a friend for so much of our lives. She loved to laugh. She loved to make other people laugh. She was quick with a joke (though not with a punchline). She could be critical, and she was not easy to impress, but her approval was worth the effort. Grace listened. She remembered (easily sharing so many memories about so many of us whom she knew through the years). She appreciated the way things were, and she had hope for the way things could be. She didn’t compromise, but she adapted and evolved and moved with the times. She created and nurtured communities around her. She cared. We miss her already. But, as she would say to us, “Look at how nicely things worked out.”