My kindergarten teacher, Marie Bishop, died yesterday. In 1959 Miss Bishop was my first contact with the world of school, and she did that wonderfully. She made me feel important. She made all of us feel important, and that what we did in school was both serious work and delight. I still feel that way.

An anecdote: My family moved away from Bemidji when I was ten. I returned to teach at Bemidji State in 1990, when I was thirty-six. That fall, as I was waiting in line to enter the movie theatre on the west edge of town, Miss Bishop came out of the theatre, saw me, and said "Hi Mark. How's Normie?" Norm was my brother, who had been Miss Bishop's student in 1952, seven years before I was. She had never seen me as a grownup, never seen me with a full beard, yet at first glance she knew me and my name and who my older brother was nearly thirty years after her last contact with either of us.

I asked her how she could possibly recognize me after all those years. She said "Oh I remember all my students. They don't change much, they just get bigger. I remember that the girls all wanted to walk with you and hold your hand when we lined up to go to lunch. Janice Hogansan and Beth Nordheim and Karen Martin would argue about whose turn it was."

I don't remember that, but Miss Bishop did. She never had children, yet she knew more children well than nearly anyone has. She was a blessing in our lives.