There Goes Our Hero…
The last time I saw Mr. Summer I didn’t say hello.
It was about a year ago. I was sitting in a coffee shop pretending to be a writer when I glanced up to see an unmistakably wiry man with a Groucho Marx mustache grabbing a cup of coffee at the Kaladi Brothers in Soldotna. He lingered at the counter long enough that I could have introduced myself, but for some reason I buried my head deeper into my screen.
Afterward I struggled to understand why I did that. Mr. Summer had been my favorite teacher growing up — he was just about everyone’s favorite teacher — and it was a decade or more since I’d last seen him. It would have been nice to catch up. I promised myself the next time I ran into him I’d say hi.
Bob Summer died before I got the chance.
I heard about his death on social media last weekend. A Twitter user who grew up in Kenai said they were grieving the loss of their favorite teacher and instantly I knew who she had to be talking about. Within hours, dozens of tributes from former students poured onto social media as news spread across the Kenai Middle School diaspora that the school had lost the most impactful teacher in its history.
That’s a bold claim, Tunseth. Better be prepared to back it up.
I am.
[Note to the reader: I’m pausing here to have a bit of a cry. You don’t normally read that kind of thing from an author and I’m not sure why I’m telling you now. But I’ve been crying on and off for a couple hours now, which seems like kind of an inappropriate amount of tears for a grown man to shed over his junior high school history teacher. I guess this hit me harder than I expected. Anyway…]
So, what made this guy so special? Well, he was a superhuman. You don’t get to meet many of those in real life. Dude got hit by cancer when he was just 23 and decided to turn a potential death sentence into a lifetime of last days on earth, attacking his passions with an almost unbelievable level of intensity. He never slowed down. He was a missionary, a father, a husband, a hunting guide, a humanitarian, a hall monitor extraordinaire and to hundreds of lucky kids like me, a hero.
Some history here. I was a back-of-the class kind of kid. A smartass. The kind of kid who thought he was too smart to pay attention. Too cool for school. It was an act that had worked for me in other classes, but when I arrived in Mr. Summer’s room I VERY quickly learned that shit wasn’t going to fly. It took exactly one under-the-breath remark on my very first day in his class to get his full attention.
“TUNSETH!”
I was terrified. This got not funny real fast. But here’s where it gets weird. He didn’t punish me. He moved my desk. Right next to his own.
As it turned out, the gruff young teacher with the cold stare and Magnum P.I. mustache kind of…liked my jokes? While other teachers might have just ignored me or told me to quiet down, Mr. Summer kept me close enough that he could fire one-liners right back at me. This was a tactic I was unprepared for and one that had an unexpected effect: I shut the hell up and listened to what he had to say.
And what he had to say was fascinating. His teaching style opened up the world to us in new and unexpected ways — showing us how politics and history intertwine, why geography can shape civilizations, what sets in motion the processes by which nations are built and destroyed; he didn’t teach as much as weave information into your brain through banter and sarcasm, using his humor, creativity and wit to almost trick you into learning. He’d show us music videos in class and explain how the song related to the fall of the Belin Wall. Other teachers didn’t do that kind of thing.
It wasn’t just me he connected with. He could be sharp-tongued to the point of abrasiveness, but also profoundly empathetic and kind. Like the best coaches, he had an innate way of unlocking each kid’s potential and getting them to feel like they were his partner rather than pupil. He befriended the shy kids, the jocks, the nerds, the new kids, the jerks. He was tough but fair and a bit of a throwback — he would throw some wise-ass punk out of class in the morning, then open up the weight room for the same kid later that afternoon. He believed in the potential for good inside every last one of his students and seemed obsessed with the idea of bringing out the absolute best in everyone he met. I’ve been lucky to have a lot of good teachers, but Mr. Summer was the first to truly treat us like we were equals. For students struggling to find an identity, he made the world make sense when little else did.
His dedication to students was the stuff of legend. Despite a lifetime of private health struggles, he led dozens of trips to Washington D.C., organized camp-outs, hikes, fishing trips and served as a walking example of the power of relentless positivity. A fanatical outdoorsman and mountaineer, one year he decided that the school gym needed a rock-climbing wall so…it got a rock climbing wall. It’s still there to this day.
He freely gave away the most precious things in the universe: Time. Love. Belief. For those he mentored, he was a bigger hero than the folk heroes he’d reference during his sometimes-rambling lectures; John Henry may have been a steel driving man, but he never climbed Denali to raise money for kids with cancer.
Mr. Summer did.
I was among the first students he taught at Kenai Junior High. Three decades later, my nephew was among his last. There’s a lot of sad people out there now that Mr. Summer is gone from the hallways, multiple generations both grieving and celebrating the life of a man who somehow managed to make each and every one feel like they had a lifelong connection with him. You don’t replace people like Bob Summer, you only hope to share their light for as long as you can.
I know why I was afraid to say hello to Mr. Summer that day in the coffee shop: I was worried he might be disappointed in me. I know this is absurd…I think he would have been proud of me. I grew up to become a journalist, eventually writing some of the newspaper headlines he used to have us clip out for class. But the fact is my life hasn’t been truly lived to its fullest. I’ve idled too long in the hallways of life and in many ways failed to live up to my potential.
I’ve wasted time, which is something I think Mr. Summer would have frowned upon. He never wasted a second.
I know I can be better, and I know this because when I was in junior high school, my favorite teacher laughed at one of my jokes. He saw more potential in me than I had ever seen in myself. That was his superpower, and he used it to help people discover the world.
Goodbye Mr. Summer, I should have said hello.
Which I guess means you managed to teach me one last lesson after all. Well played, sir. Well played.
[Note: There will be a memorial service for Mr. Summer at 10 a.m. on June 17, 2023 at Kenai Central High School, followed by a group hike up his beloved Skyline trail in the Kenai Mountains.]
Matt Tunseth is the former editor of the Chugiak-Eagle River Star, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and Anchorage Press newspapers and a proud graduate of Kenai Junior High School (now Kenai Middle School).
