I Feel line Emmeline Grangerford

If you aren't familiar with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, my allusion will mean nothing to you. Emmeline Grangerford is a character in the novel. Huck meets the feuding Grangerford family and becomes acquainted with the "tributes" Emmeline wrote about people who had passed.
I don't know how I got the job of writing "tributes" for so many people, but I have to sit still long enough tonight to write another one. My former boss, James Blue, left this life Wednesday morning at 10:40. He fought harder to stay alive than anyone I know, but cancer won the war.
The memories of Mr. Blue have been rushing through my mind for the past three days.
I first talked to him on the phone when Jason was a freshman. We had received a grade card or progress report that had Jason missing several classes. Of course, Jason told me it was a computer error, and I wanted to believe him, but I just had to make that call. Poor Mr. Blue. I was accustomed to a small school where I knew every teacher that my kids had and always knew exactly what days my kids were absent. He so tried to reassure me that Jason was indeed going to class. I remember my interview with him and Charlie Shields back in the summer of 1990. I wanted to get a job closer to home, but I'm wondering if he recommended me for the job so that he wouldn't have to endure any more calls from me. If I was in the building, I would know where Jason was and wouldn't expect him to keep me posted.
I'm just going to list some important facts about James Blue that made him special.
-He love to laugh (at himself). He and Roy Capps would head out to a football or basketball game and get lost. Now assuredly no one would have had to know, but they would tell it. I sponsored cheerleaders and would be at an away game, and here would saunter in Mr. Blue and Mr. Capps. They had been 30 miles out of the way and roaming around trying to find the field or the gym. They must have left home early I guess because they made it by gametime. They needed a Garmin.
-His door was always open. I used to go in early in the morning and visit with him sometimes. I think back to that now and think that he may have come in early to get work done, but there was a steady stream of teachers coming in to visit. Our visits were usually about our kids. He listened to me tell about Carson's games, and later I listened to him tell about his grandson's games.
-His teachers' meetings were hilarious. One of the things I used to like to do is watch the faces of new teachers at the first meeting of the year. We all loved the man, but he was no public speaker. He would ramble through the meeting and tell stories and try to tell jokes, and we would get so tickled. I so wish we had videotaped one; you just had to witness it to understand.
-He loved practical joke--as long as it didn't go too far. He participated in one we all tried to pull on Jennifer McKnight. The problem was it backfired and Jennifer Cox ended up leaving in tears. Let's just say we didn't do that again.
He wasn't very happy with us.
-He was a good sport. If you ever went to graduation at Tecumseh, you witnessed that. The custom has been for the graduates to hand Mr. Blue something as they shook hands with him. He would keep a box on the floor right by him to put the items in. My favorite years were the ones when they discreetly handed him something. Jason's class handed him Payday candy bars because they had seen him eat a Payday for lunch for four years. Carson's class handed him Walmart gift cards. All of them were empty except one. One had $50.00 on it. Someone told me that he gave that one as a door prize the next year when we went back to school. I didn't win, so I didn't remember. Even the years when the gift wasn't discreet, he was a good sport. One year the students put stickers all over his suit jacket; Allison's class gave him Mardi Gras beads, and he would just grin and take it. I know he hated it, but he just stood there.
-His expectations were high. To visit with him and hear his self-deprecating humor, you would never believe how particular he was. On the day before a North Central visit, our committee was sitting around a table in the conference room looking over the book that would be given to the visiting committee the next day. Gail Sams, the journalist, looked up and said, "How do you spell excellence?" We had put a footer on every page of the book that said "Excellence in Education." The only problem was that on about 15 pages, excellence was spelled excellance. We finally figured out that it was only on the pages that had color charts. When you looked at the page on the computer screen, the footer was so small that you couldn't read the error. Some people would have let it go, but not Mr. Blue. We stayed for several hours and disassembled and reassembled those books. Cindy Hale was on her way out for an anniversary dinner, and we called her to come and help us. Mr. Blue didn't ask us to stay, but we knew that if we didn't, he would have stayed by himself.
-His mind was incredible when it came to scheduling. It makes me think of the computer programmer who knows math so well that he can do in his head what he tells the computer to do. I guess he had built the master schedule on the big board so many times that he could see problems that the rest of us didn't see. He knew the ramifications of changing a planning period or scheduling an honors class a particular hour. He accomodated the kids not the teachers, which is the way it should be.
-He was respected-by teachers, by students, and by parents. You may not have liked his all of his decisions, but you knew he made them fairly and consistently. His leadership for 24 years put us in a position to continue and improve THS in his absence.
Tomorrow his funeral will be held at Raley Chapel at OBU. There is no more fitting place for this service. For almost twenty years, Mr. Blue stood on the stage and called out the names of graduates; he shook their hands and smiled at them as they crossed the stage. Their success was his success.