Mrs. Gruber

Crystal City High School in the 1960’s and 1970’s employed a star-studded faculty. Coaches Rodney Mills, Dick Cook and Rolla Herbert were glib, hip – all well-liked and successful. Men like Mr. Don Housett and Mr. Elmer Smith, by their mere presence in the building wielded control and demanded respect. I liked Mrs. LeFlore and her art classes. And Mr. Wills was the best teacher I ever had. I am not sure who would be second, but they are a distant second.

Business teacher Mrs. Pauline Gruber would have never made the era’s CCHS faculty list of “Cool Kids.” She was not an extrovert in any sense, and, with all the panache of a cloistered nun, her colleagues were generally far more colorful than she. To be honest, I could have seen her in my grandma’s quilting circle, grinning through a weekly dose of fabric fusion fellowship.

But in Mrs. Gruber’s own way she was special. It has taken some time, like 50 years, for me to give Mrs. Gruber her due, but today she is my gold standard for teaching with dignity and unadulterated care.

The first semester of my junior year Mrs. Guber taught me high school Bookkeeping. It didn’t take long for us to come to the agreement that we needed to find for me a new second semester warm seat to occupy, in another class. But before my short-lived accounting career could come to an inglorious end, we first had to get me north of the first semester passing line.

For the last two weeks of the semester, each day at the start of lunch hour I would dutifully report to Mrs. Gruber’s room. After a few days, I secretly began to look forward to the tutorial sessions. In between bites of her brown bag bologna and cheese on white bread (the menu never varied) she drilled me relentlessly on Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Flow and Balance Sheets; sanding down the bumps until, finally, the path between my failing grade and 60%, while not as smooth as glass, was reachable. By the end I am proud to say, I could at least balance a check book. I just assumed I was the worst student Mrs. Gruber ever taught, but she pulled me through. She cared about me, she really did. And I strove to please her. Strange how that dynamic relationship works, isn’t it?

Several years after I graduated, I walked into Dr. Hagen’s dental waiting room, and there sat Mrs. Gruber. I remember I was a little taken back that she had a life outside of her classroom. I had no knowledge of her personal life. I don’t think any of us did. I enjoyed that afternoon visiting with her. I never saw her again.

I found an online obituary for Mrs. Gruber. It was brief. It was also short and predictably bland. She taught at CCHS from 1961 until the mid 1980's. Mrs. Gruber passed away in Horn Lake, Mississippi in 2012 at the age of 89. She was born in Cardwell, MO, where she was buried. She was raised in Senatobia, MS, where after high school she became a hairstylist. When World War II broke out Mrs. Gruber joined the Navy and was stationed in San Diego, CA. After the war, she used the GI Bill to earn her teaching degree. Her first husband passed away in 1953. Her second husband in1987. She spent her retirement years living in Mississippi near her son and his family.

Remember: Mrs. Gruber was a teacher. That may sound elementary, but it's not. Such simplicity is boring to some, but for those who watch closely, there's a purity that's almost surreal. Why did she leave such an impression on me?  A fine God-given mind, for one thing. She had the disposition and inclinations of a teacher, the ability to motivate the most unlikely (myself) to rush to her classroom when the lunch bell rang, because "I couldn't wait."

Mrs. Gruber would have been the last to seek the spotlight. I am sure she never worked the room; more likely she would fade to a quiet corner. But just once, while we still can show appreciation, let’s call her from the shadows of forgotten ambiguity, and ask her to take a bow.