Thank you, Mr. Stark ~ October 19, 2005

David Heiller

It was interesting visiting with Bob Stark last week. Or should I say Mr. Stark, That’s how I always thought of him at Caledonia High School.

I went to his house on October 13 and took a picture of him with an award he received from Winona State University.

Mr. Stark (old habits die hard) told me how much he liked my writing. He recalled my mother—she had red hair right?—back when my brother Glenn first signed up for football, probably in 1957. He reminisced about Johnny Winslow. He talked about how much he loves Caledonia, how good the city has been to him. 

Mr. Stark, from the 1971 yearbook
(Thank you for sending 
me this, Jane Palen)

I left with a hearty handshake and a pat on the back. “You take care!” he said. I felt like charging out of the house and onto a football field.

That’s the kind of guy Mr. Stark is, and was.

Allow me three trips down memory lane. I remember at the end of eighth grade, my first year at CHS, I told some friends that I wasn’t going to go out for football the next year. Mr. Stark was the football coach then. He tracked me down. It was in the gymnasium. I can remember where I was standing. He put his arm around my shoulder and asked if it was true, that I wasn’t going out for football in the fall.

I answered somewhat hesitantly. This was the head football coach talking to a measly eighth grader. I said yes, it was true, I wanted to go fishing and hunting instead. He told me that he thought I was a good football player, that I could help the team, be a part of the future. Then he said what I was doing was OK. I think he looked in my eyes and saw that that’s what I wanted to do, That’s what he wanted to see.

A couple years later I was standing in line outside the gymnasium—I remember the very spot—with other football players (I had returned to the fold.) We were all getting a mass physical. It must have been August of 1969. Mr. Stark came up to me again and put his arm around my shoulder and said he was sorry to hear that my sister Lynette had died. I was totally unprepared for the comment. A wave of grief came boiling out of those hidden places. I tried hard and failed to hold back the tears that I thought had dried up a month earlier. Guys around me looked away or down at the floor. It was a powerful moment, very emotional. I felt embarrassed and a little angry at the time. But it was one of those little things that really helped me process my sister’s death. Somehow knowing that good old Mr. Stark knew enough about me to say he was sorry really helped.

Then there was the time when he knocked on Miss Tweeten’s English class door—I remember the exact classroom—and asked to talk to me. There was a father-son banquet in town. Mr. Stark knew I didn’t have a dad. There was a good speaker I would like. Would I be interested in going with him?

I said no. Hey, teenagers do dumb things, and that registers right up there. But in a way it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he asked; he thought about me, he cared. That is a good teacher, and a good person.

So it was good to see Mr. Stark again last week after 34 years. Good to feel that handshake and slap on the back. Caledonia maybe has been good to him, like he said, but he’s been even better for Caledonia, and for all of us.