To a fine lady, a small town and a big legacy

By Ron Rozelle
Correspondent

Published March 18, 2007

Here goes a totally inadequate attempt to say goodbye to my friend Janice Eubank, who was a textbook example of a master teacher, a constant lover of life and a courageous fighter.

She was a proud daughter of Tulia, who left that tiny burg a long time ago and went home for good last week.

I never heard her say “I’m from a little town near Amarillo,” or “I’m from the Panhandle.” It was always “I’m from Tulia,” boomed out in a confident, determined voice.

One summer, I tagged along on one of the many trips on which she took her students to Washington, D.C. Janice believed that every American should visit our capital city and, since I hadn’t, she shamed me into going. One hot day, our tour bus broke down in a seedy neighborhood. While we waited beside the street for another bus to come and collect us, one of the kids took a look around and said she sure wouldn’t want to live there. Another student said it wasn’t any worse than where he was from.

Whereupon Janice, her nose already in the city map and planning our next stop, cast one of her pearls. “Don’t ever be ashamed of where you came from,” she said, “just don’t let it keep you from where you’re going.” Then she slapped the map shut — everything she did was so full of energy that I sometimes got exhausted just watching her — and looked up the street for that new bus.

She was always looking for something. A new way to teach a lesson, a new place to eat, a new cake recipe that she could whip up and bring to the teacher’s workroom, a new town in the Hill Country to explore.

This was a lady who truly made an effort to get the most out of each and every day. And there’s just not a lot of folks that I can say that about. She could thoroughly enjoy an Italian opera in Houston and, later that night, have a great time two-stepping to country music.

She decided she wanted to be a teacher when she was still a little girl, out there in Tulia. And she never wavered from the plan. She started teaching in the early 1960s and she kept at it well past when she could retire with full benefits. In fact, when she had stayed longer than her health had, we thought we’d have to change the lock on her classroom door to make her stay home and rest.

Because she didn’t want to rest. She wanted to teach. She was my colleague for more than 20 years, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone who honestly loved the profession as much as she did. She was almost always the first teacher to arrive in the morning, and often the last to leave in the afternoon. She served on countless committees, was the chair of the social studies department and was elected the district’s Teacher of the Year. But honors and committees weren’t nearly as important to her as when she stood up in front of her class and did what she knew that she had been built to do.

Her students were fortunate to have crossed her path. And so were her friends. I counted myself one of those, and I’ll always be grateful for it.

In all the years I knew her, the only thing close to a disagreement that we ever had was over homemade chili. I put beans in mine, and Janice maintained that real Texans just don’t do that. So she was quick to tell me, and quick, literally, as she told me. Sometimes she’d get to talking so fast that her listeners would lean forward, as if being pulled along in her wake.

She talked like she lived, at full throttle.

In fact, I never saw anything slow her down until she got Lou Gehrig’s disease. When she had to start using a wheelchair, we knew that it was bad. Then, when that fine, quick mind started going, we knew that it was only a matter of time.

The time finally came last week.

She was a proud daughter of Tulia. And Tulia, where she was buried, can be mighty proud of her.

© 2007 Ron Rozelle

Award-winning author Ron Rozelle has written six books. He teaches creative writing at Brazoswood High School. He can be reached at ronrozelle(at)sbcglobal.net.