I was born in November 1955 at 11:40 pm… which maybe explains why I always like the quiet solitude of late nights and even enjoyed working second shift in the hospital lab for years. But to be honest, I was actually reborn in September 1969, at 8:10 in the morning, on a day in my freshman year at Torrington High School, in College English IA, B-building, Room 204 with teacher “TD” (as it was listed on my computer class assignment card). Never have two letters so understated the full amazingness of an individual or what she would come to mean to me, and to so many others.
TD — her students either loved her or hated her, but no one was *indifferent* to her. She had that effect.
For me? I LOVED… and will ALWAYS love her. TD, Mrs. Theresa Doyle, who is now my lifelong friend — who I now get to call Terry — and revel in having grown to cross that line between the “Mrs./student” boundary, to the right for first name bonding, even as I will never consider her a peer.
She will always be, for me, a venerated mentor, an honored guide, a cherished sage.
Terry, who saved my life, who absolutely blew me away with her self-possessed bearing confidence strength brilliance passion and caring;
Terry, whose class I lived for — bathing me in a blindingly bright oasis of warmth in the middle of an unending morass of black; of no escape, no change, no hope, and no reason to;
Terry, whose presence fed me even as her strength scared me, even as she drew me like a magnet because she was nourishing me with something I didn’t even realize I needed yet or thought possible; who became my role model, my choice for a “surrogate mother” – though she never knew back then. I’m not sure I did either, formally. But on some gut level, I knew and responded.
She was the “framework” on which I would base me in the future, when I started all over again. As I observed, I learned, So after I survived, I rebuilt. And then I fought back.
I eventually became my own version of what she modeled for me — that strong, intelligent, alive, self-determined, passionate, caring woman, determined to save and protect anyone she could.
She was the first woman I ever met who had such personal power and magnetism and ability to connect with her students… with me. And she cared. And empowered.
I would carry her example forward with me into my future, through the darkest of days when I almost didn’t make it, to now, and going forward, into the remainder of my days…and hers… and beyond.
Always, ALWAYS carrying her in my heart. Forever.
Hers is the gift I give now, to the teens and young adults who come to me– unsure, questioning, so much potential, but unsure they have it, or how to use it, or afraid they won’t make it, or not daring to believe they can.
Now, I reach to them as she did to me to breathe into them as much hope, vibrancy, inspiration, support, and belief in them, to give them permission to value themselves and fight for their lives, as I am able. As she did for me.
May her gift reverberate down through the unending generations from her, to me, to those we have both touched. To give life unceasingly, forever.
The rest of the story…
This was a piece from my journal when I was still working full-time as a science instructor at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. I was home recuperating from a bad bout of the flu, something that brought about my retirement.
I included it because it is about the significant change made in my life at 14…something that would affect the rest of my life’s trajectory, and even the way I taught years later, at that museum.
So this is the “rest of the story” about my friend, Terry. Terry Doyle. Mrs. Theresa Doyle. TD.
Photos by author, including photo of author and Terry Doyle recently
English I A – the force of nature
That first day of school was the start of a brand new world – public high school. No more nuns. No more sheltered world of my culture. And I was ready, even as I was nervous.
I picked a seat in the middle of that classroom and waited, but not long. She blew into that room like a force of nature. Tall, young, strong. She didn’t just walk in. She took COMMAND of that room, and us. Whatever her youth — this was only her second year of teaching — was irrelevant. Her bearing exuded a confidence and a CAPABILITY way beyond her years.
She laid down the rules of the room, then bore into each one of us with laser-beam eyes, assessing, determining if we HEARD her. Evaluating what each of us brought to her class. Who each of us was. Even the boys in the room, I think, were somewhat taken aback.
I was scared and intimidated. But I was in AWE. WHAT creature was this? I mean, I knew the old Slovak women were tough. But this was POWER. They were strong in the way they needed to be to survive in their world. To put up with things they couldn’t change or challenge. To endure, to yield, to submit to the patriarchal world they lived in. There was a limit they could not cross, and they knew it. And if you stayed in that culture and followed those rules, that was your future.
But Mrs. Doyle? This was NOT a person who SETTLED for, or SUBMITTED to. SHE was the master of her own fate. And I was blown away. I had never seen anything like this before in a woman. And I would be changed forever. No exaggeration. I even loved her car – a royal blue Mercury Cougar with back turn-signal lights that lit up in succession like arrows. So I added Mercury Cougars to Ford Mustangs as my most loved and desired cars. Later, I would also add a Porsche that belonged to a friend of hers. Yes. Any car I got in the future…it would be a “statement of power and speed.”
Portal to wisdom
But all of those things aside, she was also one of those learned portals to the wisdom of literature that I so longed to understand. She had a MASTER’S degree in this, which meant she was even more of an expert than the ordinary person.
Shakespeare. Poetry. The Odyssey. She would give a reading assignment, and I would go beyond it because I couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm. Even better, she knew all kinds of details about the stories that went way beyond what was on the page and made the class even more interesting for all of us. She made this world of literature seem like a mysterious, magical club, and I wanted to join. Even when our tastes differed.
I loved two historical fiction books in that class — Johnny Tremain and Ivanhoe — and hated Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. She felt the reverse about them. I was baffled. But now, rereading them years later, while I still love Ivanhoe, I much prefer Great Expectations to Johnny Tremain.
And while Shakespeare seemed inscrutable, she made the love sonnets come alive. And let us know that there were some great off-color jokes buried in his lines if you dared to learn his style. Who could resist that?! Who knew Shakespeare had a sense of humor?!
Also, I got included in a trip to the local theater one night with a few other students from the class to see the live play, The Man of LaMancha. Now, I was also deeply “in love” with one of the boys who went, and a few of us drove her crazy because we squandered that opportunity by flirting and joking. I still remember her shooting glances like daggers at us down the row of seats in the theater. But still, I treasured that opportunity, and paid more attention to the story than she might have thought.
Her opening my mind to these things led me to read more poetry and literature. I actually spent my next summer break reading Sir Walter Scott’s book-length poem, The Lady of the Lake…just for fun. And she loved a poet named Rod McKuen. So I bought a bunch of his books too.
The BIGGEST gift
But the BIGGEST gift she gave me was the wonderful words she put on the first page of my daily journal. She had required that we all keep a journal and write in it every day. Periodically, she would collect them and grade them. I struggled a bit, but managed to keep up. So I figured I would pass her review and get my “check mark.” But NEVER did I expect “check plus,” and even more, NEVER such words from this amazing mentor who meant everything to me:
Photo by author – My 1969 freshman English journal page
“Excellent – You are quite a writer with a great imagination”
One sentence made all the difference. That sealed it. I read that sentence thousands of times. Soaked up the praise. And I had always wanted to be a writer, but never dreamed I could. This affirmed I could reach for a dream. Be a writer. Or an English teacher. Or anything else I dreamed of. I savored every minute of her class, soaking up the magic that she wove in that classroom.
The power of one person’s connection
Dr. Aliza Pressman, a developmental psychologist who researches resilience, noted in an interview that quite often, when you look into the past of resilient victims, you find there is SOMEBODY that child felt a deep connection to. And even one person can make all the difference. And she did.
The Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca, had a quote that applied here to a certain extent.
“We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be.”
Certainly, I couldn’t have her as my parent. But as a surrogate role-model whose caring filled a gap my own mother left, I chose her. She was amazing and true. I felt seen. Encouraged. Honored. And not alone.
Her caring was like water on a dried-up, nearly dead plant. And because of it, I responded. I had been living a 14-year drought, and was almost gone. And here, right at the crucial moment when all could have been lost, the Universe sent me Mrs. Doyle. It saved my life, and even though there would be more challenges and crises to come, she gave me the glimpse of what could be possible in life.
The break in his wall of control
She was the first time I opened up to an outsider AT ALL. The first time I actually dismissed his rules in spite of how deep his brainwashing went. She was the first “other” that I opened my heart to, even as she did not know that. For the first time in my life, I TRUSTED one of those people I had been warned about to fear, and in doing so, I willingly broke every family rule I’d been indoctrinated with.
My biggest terror that year came when she was out sick for several weeks toward the end of the school year. I was so afraid she would die. It all turned out well, and she returned before the end of that semester and reassured me all was well. I was so relieved. I couldn’t conceive of her not being there.
So when it came to her, I said little to Dad, but instead, kept my own counsel. He could believe whatever he wanted to about outsiders. But about her, I tucked my opinions deep inside me, where I could cherish them and keep them safe from him. And start to look at the world and my life in terms of how she did things versus how he said they should be.
Did I tell her what was happening at home? No way. That was impossible then…to tell anyone. First, I would have been in real physical danger if I told anyone, and he found out. And also, I’d been trained not to do anything that might “hurt the family.” I was bludgeoned and guilted into silence. And ashamed. Why would I want to share that aberration of life in this amazing new world of school, with this wondrous teacher…or anyone else.
There was also another reason I would never have told her, or anyone. I was protecting them. I knew I couldn’t protect me at home, but I could protect others, especially people I cared deeply about. And I cared about her.
If I had told anyone he was abusing me…and I didn’t really even understand that this was “abuse.” I still thought I was just a lone person living this strange life that I had to keep secret.
But if they confronted him, I was terrified of what he might do to them and me. There was a risk of his losing control and being violent. And for sure he would look to destroy anyone challenging him, in whatever way he could — legally, socially, emotionally. He was all about self-preservation. Threaten him, and it would have been a “no-holds-barred” scenario.
And at that time, no one talked about abuse or was looking for it. Should anyone outside the family challenge him, I’m not sure there would have been any backing or support for them. And certainly there were no family support systems to help us. My mother couldn’t support us so she would have been upset with me. And while he might have been taken away initially, at that time, they usually allowed perpetrators back. And then, I would be at his mercy behind closed doors.
No. What happened at home was locked in its own compartment of silence. And that was the best it could be back then.
But still, Terry was a gift sent by the Universe at exactly the right time to give me the tools I could use at that moment — role modeling, caring, attention, and affirmation. Without knowing it, she taught me about keeping my own counsel and making my own decisions about people and life. About what to think — something I’d not learned before. And I learned. Because for me to reject his dictates and, instead, form my own opinions where she was concerned, that was a major break in his wall of control.
Film class
In fact, I would have her again in my senior year for a film class. It was great! Not only learning about old films and techniques to make movies, but I also had the chance to take my father’s old movie camera and make a movie about my class and that school. It was an adventure. I was all over the school filming. Totally free to create. Even climbed up on a roof to get the best angled shot I wanted. And I stayed late after school to edit the footage. I would have stayed in that small room editing the film all weekend long if I could have. I never wanted to go home. And just like my freshman year, where I reveled in her teaching, that year, I reveled in creating for her.
The predator aroused
But the interesting thing was that by then, my father had picked up on the fact that she was a strong influence for me, and that I really liked her. And to him, that was a threat he had to investigate. So when it came time for parent/teacher night that semester, he went to see her, himself. He sent my mother to meet the other teachers. But HE went to see HER.
Later, he shared how he smoothly thanked her for being “such a supportive influence” in my life, especially since the past year had been hard with my grandfather’s illness and death. But I knew that was all a lie. From his comments, I knew he put on the “caring, thankful” father routine. But I knew what he was really doing.
When he said he was going to see her, I was afraid for her. Afraid that I’d been so stupid as to let my enthusiasm for her show. He was a predator and picked up on that. She might be a threat to his control over me. And he couldn’t abide that.
So, he was there to assess her and determine who this person was, so he would know how to turn me against her. This was the same man who didn’t want me to have a pen pal in grammar school. He definitely did not want me to have an adult mentor who might challenge his programming.
A life changed forever & the beginning of the end
What he didn’t know was that NOTHING he could have said would have ever changed my opinion of her. And that was final in my mind. And THAT…was HUGE.
Maybe I was still too young to defy him openly and say such a thing. But I could know that truth inside me, and hold it close. And that was the beginning of the end of his control. That was the first time in my life I rejected his reality and trusted my own judgment. And once that crack started, even though it would still take years, that crack was eventually going to break that wall wide open.
Forever bonded
After I graduated from high school, I stayed in touch for a bit, but we each went our separate ways for a number of years. That is how life was supposed to go. She had children. I had many challenges ahead of me. But always, I carried her mentoring in me. And in those next several years, I would need every ounce of it.
We did reconnect several years later when I was about to get married, and then after I had our son. And we have stayed in touch even after I moved out of state, and as we’ve both moved into many more phases of life.
At this point, we are both “elders” but remain bonded for good.
So to Terry – a closing note from my journal:
Teachers save lives. Terry Doyle, thank you with all my heart. For the example you set, for the worlds you opened up to me, poems, the graduation gift of the Dr Zhivago music box, but most especially that treasured message you wrote in my journal. I never realized I was ”excellent” at anything until you told me. You were my lifeline through very dark years.
If you think you didn’t give me enough at that time, know that you gave me the EXACT thing I NEEDED and could take in at that moment — your caring, and your example. I couldn’t have taken in anything else at that point, and neither of us could have changed what was happening then. But you gave me the exact gift I most needed at the right moment. The gift that would change the course of my life from then on.
So what you gave, unknowingly, being just the caring, powerful teacher you were, was earth-shaking to that 14-year-old. To that struggling young adult. And still to me, now. So, for forever – thank you, and I love you.
My artist “PS” —
I noted a curious thing today. When writing this, I looked back through that journal. As I’ve noted in previous pieces here, I needed to paint for this memoir before I could find the words to write.
Today, in that 1969 English IA journal, I noticed an interesting parallel. Apparently, even then, writing wasn’t enough. It seems even then, I needed to sketch, doodle, create a visual to walk beside my words…
Soul Mosaic 
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