For Jan

I was touched and honored to be asked to help eulogize my colleague and friend Jan Rowley at her celebration of life service on June 1, 2024. Rob was asking four different people to speak to four different aspects of Jan's life. I had already been writing this piece in my head before Jan's husband Rob Williamson reached out to me. My thoughts were too big for a social media post, but I kept putting ideas together in my head as I processed this loss and thought I might post them here. Then Rob's request came and what I wrote and read for Jan at her gorgeous service follows.

Good morning. My name is Beth McGrath and I am here to speak to the incredible life Jan shared with Ralston Public Schools. 

Not an easy task!

In August of 1987, I was a brand new teacher at Ralston High School and Jan and Bob Benzel came to my classroom to introduce themselves. Jan told me she was starting her 11th year, and internally my jaw dropped and I thought to  myself-- 11 years--that’s a LIFETIME. We laughed about that story many times--I went on to teach for 33 years and Jan taught for 40! You can’t think Ralston High School without thinking “Jan Rowley” and you can’t think Jan Rowley without thinking “Ralston High School.”

To describe her impact is nearly impossible.

She had the incredible gift to reach, to connect with students of all types and academic levels. She spent years teaching our most at-risk students in basic level classes and at our alternative school. They adored her because they saw her compassion and warmth, and her genuine belief in each of them, and she could talk to them about anything--the car they were rebuilding, sports they were playing or following, music they liked. What they were interested in, she was interested in for them.  And secretly at the time, and openly later as attested to by dozens of recent FaceBook posts, they appreciated her high expectations of them, as high as the expectations she had for top students in her advanced and AP classes, who equally adored her.

She co-developed the beloved humanities class introducing students to classic films, art and music, giving these Ralston students experiences they would have never had otherwise: museums, productions at Opera Omaha! 

And everything was done with joy.

How was she able to reach such a broad range of students, and colleagues? She was a Renaissance woman. 

She was as comfortable and capable working wrestling tournaments which she and I spent countless hours together doing under the “tutelage” of her long time friend and my late husband, Jim McGrath, as she was chatting with students after a theatrical or musical performance sharing from her own vast drama experiences. Theatre kids knew when Ms. Rowley was attending a performance--they recognized her laugh in the audience and understood what high praise it was!

An avid and supremely knowledgeable Yankees fans, the only time I ever saw the wall-mounted tv in her classroom on, besides for showing Romeo and Juliet or Citizen Kane, was after school one April on opening day watching the Yankees while she worked in her classroom--like she did every single night until at least 6:00 p.m. 

She and Rob worked every varsity home football game for years in the pressbox running the clock and spotting for the announcer.

She attended every drama production, was the Co-creator and co host of  Mr. RHS--THE perennial favorite event at Ralston High School, and for some kids their first introduction to Jan’s wickedly funny side and her brilliant sense of humor. 

She sponsored and chaperoned the Ski club again with my late husband, marshaling kids to Colorado teaching them to ski and enjoy and appreciate a completely different environment.

She served as class sponsor--senior class, freshman class. She loved freshmen!

Students saw her everywhere--not just in their class. And that made all the difference in seeing how much she cared abou them as well rounded scholars and human beings.

One of my favorite memories with Jan was happening upon the Bayeux Tapestry in Bayeux, France when we were helping chaperone one of Todd Urmacher’s Europe trips. Unless you are a British literature teacher, you may not understand the significance of this--but I can’t imagine experiencing it with anyone else but Jan. We looked at each other in amazement--”can you believe we’re seeing this?” she asked, her eyes sparkling, her smile wide.  She (and Rob) taught me that celebrating a birthday should be a fortnight, not one day. She introduced me to Love Actually as THE Christmas movie. And speaking of Christmas, she had the ultimate Christmas sweater collection which students and English department staff anticipated seeing every year--she had enough to wear one every school day in December. 

Jan continued after her retirement in 2016 to serve on the Board of the Ralston Schools Foundation including as Board President. She continued her positive influence and impact on Ralston Public Schools and the wider Ralston community through this work.

In short, Jan was lovely and smart and strong and classy and compassionate and So Much Fun.  To RPS and 100s if not 1000s of students, she was truly a good and faithful servant. May flights of angels sing her to her rest.

My First Solo Trip after Jim's Death I Visit our Daughter

Her apartment is lovely:

Clean, fresh, inviting, stylish

Just like she is

So comfortable here in Austin, Texas

Embracing it all.

She and JD show me their haunts,

We go to dinners. We have

A picnic, ride scooters, shop South Congress.

I soak up late January sun

On their patio.

She effortlessly navigates 

And flows this different vibe,

This new terrain.

My God--she is grown up.

I am so proud. I am so sad.

Not just because Jim isn't here

To receive my epiphany but because

It is unmistakably true.

My sweet Teener is grown:

Open and fearless, 

lovely and confident 

With her own life.

My baby.

Her Name is Nicole

 Her name is Nicole.

Her name is Nicole, and she’s a critical care nurse at UNMC.  This is what I know:  on November 16, 2020 she worked the 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. shift on the 5th floor Medical ICU of the Nebraska Medicine Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska.    I don’t know her last name. I don’t know what her hair looks like beneath her PPE cap. I never saw the bottom half of her face under her N95 mask and plastic shield. I know she graduated from Bellevue East High School and she is young. So young. She took care of my husband in room 5340 in his last hours of consciousness.

Jim’s children and I were able to spend time with him the afternoon of the 16th, and I was able to stay with Jimmy in the end in the ICU. Nicole arranged for all the superfluous machines to be removed from the room and directed me to where I could grab something to eat before resuming my vigil.  When I returned, she had arranged for a recliner and warm blankets for me so I could be comfortable by Jim’s side.  We hoped he would hold steady through the night and we could move him home for hospice care, his ardent wish.  Suddenly, exhausted, alone, covered in PPE myself, my mind raced uncontrollably over everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, the decisions he, I, the family had made. Soon I was literally wringing my hands, pacing, on the verge of fainting and then finally wailing, prostrate across his hospital bed.  Words fail here, but anyone who has experienced this understands this complete, abject despair.

Nicole came in and I emotion vomited all my fears, failings and anxiety at her.  

She held my gaze and spoke to me with brutal honesty and compassion.  She relayed what she was seeing routinely in the unit, about the patients who didn’t  survive intubations, who languished for days or weeks on ventilators, alone, until their deaths.  She spoke of Jim’s poor prognosis on arrival and the young people for whom she had also cared, to no avail.  And then she characterized what she saw in our room with me, Jim and his kids that afternoon as nothing short of “beautiful,” that she witnessed it, that she felt “uplifted” by it, the laughter and love.  “This is the way it should be,” full of love and surrounded by light, she said.  She relayed her own loss sitting with her grandmother earlier this year as she passed from Covid. I expressed my increasing concern for her and all the frontline healthcare workers and my worry about the long term effects that surely these months, this year will have on all of them.  She demurred and turned her attention back to me and my situation.  Somehow, some how, she was able to reframe what I was experiencing with honesty, authority, compassion, and clarity.   

As she spoke, her eyes never wavering from me, I felt calm.  My breathing slowed, my crying ceased, and I could center, take it all in, and finally turn back with strength to Jim and our final hours together ahead.

Eventually, Nicole excused herself because, well, she was busy.  These professionals are stretched physically, emotionally, mentally beyond anything normal, and every day the numbers grow.  She expertly stripped her PPE in the room for the innumerable time that day, to move swiftly down the hall out of my sight to don it all again before entering another patient’s room and do all over again what she does shift after shift. 

Later, when her shift was over, I saw her leaving; she caught my eye through the window and gave me a little wave.  I hope she could see my eyes smiling as I waved back.  I’m certain she left having no idea of the pure gift she gave that night.  She doesn’t know how many times I have already revisited the moments together when I have felt the panic rising.  

My family’s loss is immeasurable, so when I compound that grief for the more than a quarter-million souls lost in our country as of Thanksgiving Day 2020, I can hardly bear it.   We struggle every day, but we are so grateful for the life of James John McGrath and all that it entailed.

Today I am thankful for all the incredible doctors, techs, RTs, and nurses at UNMC that cared for Jimmy, especially his nurse on November 16.  Her name is Nicole.

If I'd known

This is for all the teachers, like me, who are retiring this year and ending their careers in an unimaginable way due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  We are the ultimate seniors missing our own special good-byes:

If I had known I would never get to teach Romeo and Juliet again, never again guide students through this literary rite of passage rather than preparing them packets, I never would have retired this year.

If I'd know I wouldn't get those last two chances to teach composition and get it "right" before retiring, I never would have put my paperwork in.

If I'd known I wouldn't get a proper goodbye--to a full class, to bustling halls, to my friends, long-time colleagues, my homeroom kids, the bells, to room B219, to my building, the center of my life for (nearly) 33 years, I would have stayed another year.

If I'd thought for a minute that I couldn't sit just one more time with RPS faculty and staff at graduation and watch those kids walk across the stage, I certainly would have planned for another year.

If I had known that when I said, "Have a great weekend" on March 12 that what I really meant was "I hope you have a wonderful life," I wouldn't have taken the last term for granted.  I would not have spent these last months looking ahead toward a finish line.  I would have savored all the moments.  All of them: the funny, the annoying, the joyful, the infuriating.  Every single one.  I would have said to my students, my colleagues--young and old--my bosses, my friends, my department, "Thank you for making this last year great.  Thank you for everything always."

If I'd known, I'd have made sure to say "I love you guys."

A letter to my daughter on the eve of her first day as a professional educator:

Colleen,

In the early 1970s when I was a little girl, your uncle Bruce and I would start the school year already anxiously awaiting the Sears Christmas catalog.  We would pore over that sucker looking for all the crap we wanted to ask for for Christmas. We’d sit side by side on Grandma’s scratchy couch and take turns circling items we hoped would magically appear under our Christmas tree on the 25th of December.  As he was a boy and I a girl, there was never any confusion as to which circled toys were for me, which for him.

When I was about 8 years old, I desperately wanted a pink nurse’s kit I saw in the catalog.  It was so pink so girly.  But that Christmas I didn’t get the pink nurse’s kit.  I got a black doctor’s kit instead that had a lot more stuff in it and said “DOCTOR” on it.  My mother told me that I could be a doctor if I wanted. Women could be doctors as well as nurses and just because it was pink didn’t mean it was the only option for girls. I could choose. I had already abandoned my desire to be a “stewardest” by this point.   My mother, a feminist, wasn’t trying then (nor ever in the future) to push me into a male-dominated career or something like that; she really just wanted me to know that I could do whatever I wanted as long as it was important work, and it shouldn’t be limited by gender. She also may have been concerned that my other career aspiration to this point was a “check out girl at Red Owl” grocery store.  

My mother left her career and stayed home with us when we were growing up. She baked, she cooked meals and kept the house, schlepped us to dance class and little league practices but also fed her intellectual life with books, politics, great friends and lively conversation.  And when we were mostly grown up, she went back to teaching. She chose to do that and students at Wayne High for 20 years were the better for it. 

When I reached my career goal of check out person at TWO different grocery stores by the time I was out of high school, I had to rethink my career path 😏and it turned out I didn’t want to be a nurse, doctor or “stewardest.”  What I wanted was to be a teacher--like my mother was, like her mother was, like you are now.  

I’m so proud of the strong woman you are and the career choice you have made.  You can powerfully impact the world with your strength, grace, and compassion. There’s not much more important than what we do every day.  It’s going to be hard. There’s no phoning it in, and there will be tough times and failures and self-doubt, but there will also be small and tremendous successes and joy and wonderment and fun. You are going to be an excellent teacher, and a 4th generation Jacques-Hodges-Schafer-McGrath one at that.

Welcome to the fold Ms. McGrath and God bless you, my Dream Come True; now go show them what you’ve got!

Mom

Powerful Failure

I believe in the power of failure as the world’s greatest teacher.  Not enough young people experience true failure, failure of their own making, failure from their own shortcomings.  Young folks don’t experience healthy failure any more simply because of the protection deliberately afforded them by adults:  parents and educators.

While well-meaning, parents bend over backward to protect their kids from perceived and real failure.  The score isn’t kept at little kids soccer or t-ball games. Everyone gets a participation trophy at the end of every pee-wee sports season.  Parents work too hard on their children’s homework and make excuses for why students aren’t measuring up, “Oh, that’s my fault; I didn’t get him up early enough.”  “I’m sorry, I didn’t remind her to do her homework,” when what they should be doing is telling Junior that when he or she is late to school or with an assignment, there are natural consequences.  It’s simple logic. If Junior has to stay after school or his grade drops, perhaps he will make sure he’s up on time or getting her assignment in. It’s not mean; it’s just real.

We in education are no better.  We bend over backward getting students to just “pass” classes.  We work so hard and offer so much assistance and multiple chances so that they can earn that D- when what we should be doing is letting them fail.  That’s right. Flunk the class. What’s a slew of D-’s going to do for a student anyway? It’s far better to fail at this stage of the game than to delay the learning that comes with failure until later when the stakes are much higher. The military doesn’t give endless chances to get it right.  Colleges don’t. Certainly, employers and industries don’t either. And neither do most relationships.

When students experience failure at a younger age, in a natural way, they learn how to bounce back.  That’s resilience. They figure out how to get up and move forward. They recognize their weaknesses and strengths and can operate accordingly in the future.  This is a powerful intrinsic learning experience. When these students learn to accept failures and how to turn them around, they are teaching themselves the grit they will need later on in their lives.  

Standing between young people and defeat delays genuine failure to times when the consequences are too great.  We need to let kids stumble and fall when there is a healthy safety net, when they’re practicing in an environment surrounded by support systems of important adults in their lives (parents, teachers, family members, church leaders, coaches, sponsors) who teach them how to address failure, not find ways to prevent or excuse it.  If they never have that practice, what happens when they fail outside of all that prevention that was cloaked as protection?  The stakes are too high then and they may not be able to hold a job, persevere in difficult classes or training programs, function independently outside of the orb of their parents’ influence.  We need to destigmatize failure. We don’t need to downplay the importance of success or diminish the consequences of failure, but we need to reframe the experience and let young people own it.   

While embarrassing, failure is not shameful.  It’s a natural part of developing as a person with grit and resilience.  I still fail at things all the time. You’ll find my lesson plans littered with post-lesson comments like “Nope” and “Didn’t work,” even “Disastrous.”  I use these failures to drive me forward and to craft better lessons. When I fail miserably with a parent--lose my cool, take something personally--I may be embarrassed, but I’m not ashamed and I know I’m human and will do better the next time I’m faced with a similar situation.

The bottom line is that when we, as adults, stand between young people and failure, we are doing them a great disservice, and we hurting them.  It’s time that adult stop preventing kids from failing, but rather help them navigate through their failures instead.

Bragging Rights

I’ve always been slightly jealous of my children’s pride in their father’s childhood in New York.  His stories made it seem so exotic and they were fascinated by his tales of NYC in the 1950s. Hey, my family were homesteaders, they lived in freaking sod houses and broke the land and settled virgin country, for God’s sake.  Those things somehow never measured up to New Years in Times Square or swimming all summer in the Atlantic Ocean. My childhood in Minnesota and the northern plains growing up around skiing and skating, lakes and fishing should have seemed ideal to outdoor oriented children like ours who loved camping and playing outside like kids from a different generation.  Yet, my Minnesota stories somehow trailed off in the telling to an increasingly indifferent audience. “Daddy, tell us about Big Ma, the bootlegger again,” they’d clamor as I tried one more time to glamorize how my grandmother ran the post office in Charbonneau, North Dakota. . .  This strange competitiveness with my husband for who-had-the-coolest-childhood afforded me one of my most embarrassing moments of mothering. Ironically enough, it occured at a beloved lake.

It was on one of dozens of camping trips we took to Gull Point State Park in Okoboji, Iowa with our young children and grandchildren.  This campground, its accompanying trails, playground, and beach were fixtures in our children’s summer adventures. This trip was no different.  On this particular summer afternoon, the sun glinted off the calm lake water as I stood on the beach surveying the kids playing. I could feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on my shoulders as shouts of swimmers echoed off the trees along the bank behind me.  I looked down, wiggled my toes in the cool perfectly clear glacier formed West Lake Okoboji, the sand squishing up between my toes.

Tyler, Ellie and Nicholas stood nearly chest deep in the water in this protected inlet, and I soon could see that they were trying to skip rocks.  This was a losing prospect. It is nearly impossible to skip rocks from that depth. The angle is all wrong. To adequately skip a rock even one skip, the plane surface of a pancake thin rock must smash flatly on the water’s surface to make it bounce.  This demands a special sideways flick of the wrist that sends the flattened stone skimming above and then along the water.  These kids were clueless.

“Let Mommy show you how to skip rocks,” I said grandiloquently to Nicholas.  I unnecessarily reminded Tyler and Ellie, “Grandma grew up in Minnesota. I know how to do this.”  I approached them, and Nick handed me a perfectly shaped and sized rock for skipping. I stood closer to the shore illustrating that they couldn’t be so deep into the lake and achieve the appropriate angle.  I held the rock between my thumb and index finger in my right hand, cocked my arm out at the elbow, then quickly snapped my arm and wrist chucking the rock as hard as I could directly into Nick’s face.

He dropped like a 50-pound sack of potatoes into the water then bobbed up screaming and sputtering lake water, his hand over his eye.  Tyler squealed in delight and Ellie began to cry. I rushed to him as fast as I could flailing through the water, cupped my left hand behind his head and clapped my right hand over his mouth as we now had drawn the attention of all the other beach goers.  “SHHHHHHH” I said as I pulled his hand down to make sure he still had two eyeballs. It was fine. An angry red welt was forming under his left eye, but it’s not like the skin was cut or anything. Geez.  Calm down. I looked furtively left and right over my shoulders, hoping no one had witnessed by mother-of-the-year nomination ending behavior.

I’m not proud of this reaction where I was more concerned for my public embarrassment than my child potentially losing an eye, but, the reaction was genuine, and the regret has served as a reminder of my hubris on a couple of different levels.  I needed to learn to let go of the competitiveness with my husband--just let it go, if not for my own well-being, then for the safety of my children! Clearly, it was time to quit worrying about who was scoring more points with the kids with their legacy stories.  So I did just that; I quit thinking about it.

My son came to me recently stewing over designs for an addition to one of his tattoos, an addition he wanted to thoughtfully incorporate all aspects of his own personal background, including me, and my side of his family.  It reminded me again that my children are their own people made up of their own experiences from their individual childhoods.  My husband’s and mine are largely irrelevant to the memories they will share with their own children down the road.  So it turns out that my big mistake wasn’t the rock to my son’s face; it was obsessing over and competing for the best childhood.  Still, I can hope that among the stories my son shares with his own children some day will be the one of his dangerously reckless mother nearly putting his eye out, teaching him how to skip rocks.