The poet Robert Frost wrote of “The Road Not Taken.” Yogi Berra’s sage advice was that if we come to a fork in the road, we should take it.
An especially important fork appeared for me during my junior year of high school. Like many teenage boys, I was eager to be independent. At that time, I planned to be an auto mechanic, and my dream was to have my own alignment and brake shop. So I dropped out of school and found a menial full-time job until I could get a job in an auto repair shop.
However, Mrs. Kirk, one of my high school counselors, had other plans for me. She kept phoning me in the evening — on her own time — until she convinced me I should complete high school and attend college.
Mrs. Kirk arranged for me to visit the Arizona State College campus in Flagstaff, where I was offered a small scholarship. Although I had never seriously considered college, I gratefully accepted their scholarship. I would have majored in automotive engineering if they had offered it, but because they didn’t, I somehow found I had a natural aptitude for chemistry, which I hadn’t taken in high school. I became a chemistry major.
I earned a bachelor’s degree and later a master’s in chemistry, and enjoyed a successful 39-year career as a research chemist, with my final 25 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
About 25 years after completing high school, I suddenly realized the huge impact Mrs. Kirk had made on my life. By then she had retired, but I was able to trace her to Tempe, near where our eldest son was attending college.
After writing to renew our acquaintance, I arranged to visit her at her home. I’m not sure she specifically remembered me or her actions that had changed my life. Although our culture, especially then, taught that crying is unmanly, our reunion generated strong emotions that produced tears in both of us.
During our visit I was able to thank Mrs. Kirk for the interest she took in me and the personal time she spent phoning in the evening. I told Mrs. Kirk that, if not for her, I would not have attended the college I did, perhaps not attended college at all, nor had a successful career as a chemist.
If I had not attended that college, I would not have met and married Nancy. And if I had not met and married Nancy, our two sons would not exist.
Mrs. Kirk told me every teacher dreams of having a significant impact on their students’ lives. But even if that happens, teachers rarely learn of it. So this was a very special visit for both of us.
I suppose this confirms Yogi’s advice about taking the fork in the road.
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